Adams Arts Group Celebrates Award While Planning Future
ADAMS, Mass. — The event was billed as a reception to celebrate the Arts Advisory Board recent recognition with an innovation award.
But like so many gatherings of this local group of artists and entrepreneurs, the focus was less about past success and more about its future endeavors.
The Kenneth E. Pickard Memorial Innovation Award was presented at the annual Massachusetts Municipal Association conference in January to acknowledge the town and the group's creative efforts.
"It's a great recognition for us and for the work that the Arts Advisory Board has done in Adams in less than two years," said Town Administrator Tony Mazzucco. "You guys have come onto the scene and really made a huge difference and really made an impact in the community, in the look of the community, in the feel of the community, and the recognition of the community that we get statewide."
About two dozen local officials and others connected to the advisory board gathered Tuesday in the Mohagony Room at Town Hall for refreshments and a chance to view the plaque with the motto "Make Art Happen."
It all started with a bunch of local artists that had taken to dropping into Mazzucco's office to talk about what they could do.
It turns out, they could do a lot. The somewhat amorphous group that swells and ebbs around a steering committee core was established in August 2015; by the end of 2016, it had created a removable mural concept to fight blight, decorated windows to brighten Park Street, installed two Art on the Trail murals and launched its biggest success to date: the Berkshire Mountain Faerie Festival.
The board's goal from the start has been utilize arts and creativity as a public good and to reinvigorate this former mill town, and beyond. The group's members hail from around North County and its hope is to generate fruitful collaborations among Berkshire communities.
And that has them focused on the future with a slate of events and projects gearing up for 2017.
George LeMaitre said Art on the Trail — public art along the Ashuwillticook Rail Trail — will install two more murals this season, one on the back of the Adams Visitors Center and the second on the mill at Harmony Street across from Russell Field.
Last year, murals were placed on the mill off Grove Street owned by LeMaitre and Pat Fietta; the second on the wastewater plant that currently can be seen mainly be riders on the Berkshire Scenic Railway.
"I've had people tell me it's great to go down the trail and see them," LeMaitre said. "I know they had the Steel Rail run last year and they saw it while running and thought it was fun. ... It's a work in progress and seems to be going at a good rate."
Art on the Trail is also working with Cheshire, which wants to place a sculpture of some type at one its rail trail crossings.
Art About Town, a North Adams initiative led by Phil Sellers that's painted a number of decorative crosswalks, also wants to do something in Adams this year. He's also talking about a type of sidewalk stenciling that reveals images only when it's wet.
The group is also promoting the Bag Share project, an initiative to create 8,400 shopping bags using recycled materials — mainly plastic woven feed bags — and used irrigation tubing. Brought to North Berkshire by Leni Fried and Mike Augspurger, the town's taken up the challenge to create a sustainable bag for every resident in Adams ahead of the plastic bag ban that goes into effect on March 30.
But the big event is the return of the fairy festival on Saturday, June 17. Gail Sellers passed out some of the first posters and said weekly meetings will begin soon and that the festival plans to have a table at Thunderfest on March 4.
Her husband, Phil Sellers, is already on the lookout for pinecones, acorns, slate, mushrooms, branches, bark — anything that can be used in creating the fairy village set in a corner of the Adams Agricultural Fairgrounds.
"Last year, I had to run around the whole time, foraging in the woods it was so popular," he said, adding that information on where to donate or volunteer will be posted on the festival's website.
Richard Tavelli said the festival would "draw back the veil of the fairy realm" to focus on creativity, whimsy and stewardship of the earth" and keep the best things from last year with more vendors, workshops and entertainers.
Gail Sellers said the festival may be partnering with other organizations, including a geocaching group that is planning a fairy trail in July and Arrowhead, home of the Berkshire Historical Society, which is looking to create an "enchanted Berkshires" theme over several weekends. Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art has also inquired about keeping the fairy village in place for the following weekend, when the field becomes a campground for the Solid Sound Music festival.
"It warms my heart because one of the first things we wanted when we started this is we wanted it to be not just Adams but the Berkshire Mountains," she said. "Bringing these communities together are going to make this successful."
Tavelli, a member of the Ilvermorny Committee that is looking at how to capitalize on "Harry Potter' author J.K. Rowling's placement of the fictional Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry on Mount Greylock, said that group is looking to host a Wizard's Ball on the Friday night before the festival.
"It would be a community event geared for adults that could be indoors and outdoors and, of course, people would be encouraged to come in costume," he said. "The idea is to spark interest in the fairy festival and creativity and linking it to the Rowling phenomenon."
Members of the group gave kudos to Mazzucco for supporting their efforts.
"He gave us the fuel and the spark, so to speak, and it really energized all of us to feel like we were being recognized," Gail Sellers said.
Tags: arts advisory board, fairy festival, recognition event,
