Arts Fest Emma Holland

July 12,2018

After class today, I took a walk. With my camera, I ended up covering the whole strip of tents that make up Arts Fest in State College. There were so many creators and it was hard to compare them all because of how different they were. Jewelry, pottery, painting, and photography are probably some of the most popular, but either way, there is just an overwhelming amount of pieces to look at. Amongst it all, the paintings that really caught my eye belonged to a woman named Maryann Schmidt.

When I first came into her tent, she was talking with other people, which gave me time to look at her paintings individually and to look through the book she made about the process of making the canvas and painting her works. A few minutes later, we started to talk and I complimented her paintings. She is an artist from New York and is known for her original oil paintings. I noticed that her works focused heavily on shadows and transparency, for most of her paintings included bottles and jars. I loved the color she mixed for everything as well. The work that stuck out the most to me was called “Hydrangea”, and pictured hydrangea flowers in a mason jar. Maryann explained that this painting took her the longest to finish, which was about three weeks. Every petal is different and multiple colors blended together, and she worked from the back to the front, in order to achieve the layered look. I pointed out another work to her, titled “Overdue” because the shadows were so realistic that the flat canvas looked like a 3D stack of books. She commented that “books were where I started”, and that stood out to me because the pieces from earlier in her career reflected how much she has grown as an artist as you look at her recent works in comparison. I really admired her large canvas paintings and it was uplifting to meet her and talk to her about her art.

Every tent at Arts Fest was different and eye-catching, but I was pulled towards Maryann Schmidt’s detail and realism. I could tell how she saw beauty in everyday things, such as glass bottles and books. Other people might call them “simple” or believe they have less of a meaning, hidden or not, than other works, but the message was in the simplicity and the realism for me. I walked away with the message that even these “insignificant” things can be interesting art pieces.