City’s ‘Arts at the Park’ Delights Visitors to Cherry Hill Farmhouse

On a splendid spring Saturday May 3, visitors to Cherry Hill Farmhouse delighted in the City’s third annual Arts at the Park festival adjacent to the lush Farmers Market at the nearby Community Center at 300 Park Ave. 

With over 30 local artists displaying their artworks on tables back-dropped by Cherry Hill’s spectacular blooming perennial flower gardens, visitors enjoyed art walk tours, interactive activities for kids and adults, a plein air competition, live musical and dance performances, and simply strolling about in the sunshine, chatting with local creatives and browsing or purchasing their artworks.

Such a wonderful celebration of community.

As part of the City’s Art Day celebration – conceived to dovetail somewhat with World Art Day – the event provides a “wonderful opportunity to showcase art in such a scenic location like Falls Church City Hall, Cherry Hill Farmhouse, and Cherry Hill Park…. Events like these not only provide a platform for artists to display their work but also foster community engagement and appreciation for the arts,” the celebration’s primary sponsor, the City’s Arts and Humanities Council, posted on social media. 

The celebration is also designed to allow visitors to “enjoy a diverse selection of artwork, as well as Falls Church’s public art installations and live fine art performances,” the Council added. Other major sponsors for the event include the City, Arts, Theater, Culture, and History (CHART) Foundation, and the Village Preservation and Improvement Society (VPIS).

At the celebration, The Falls Church Independent chatted with the event’s key organizers and various creatives cheerfully displaying their artworks. 

“This is something I’ve always wanted to do,” Roxanne Kaylor, the principal organizer for the day said. So, after she approached at-large member of the Arts and Humanities Council, Mary Sellers, about perhaps combining the celebration with the City’s World Art Day festivities and Sellers was receptive, Kaylor was off-and-running – and putting the day together. 

As a former Fairfax County Schools art teacher of 30 years, Kaylor conceived of the celebration as a great opportunity for beginning artists to display their works and interact with other creatives. “Just to bring in a few local artists so the community can see their work,” she said. “And it’s also a great networking situation. You know, where artists sometimes get isolated in their studios or in their homes and nobody sees their artwork. So this gives them an opportunity to show off their work.”

“I wanted to keep this Art Walk as kind of like a hometown garden affair,” Kaylor said. “I don’t want it to become a major, major commercial [event]. I want it to always have that flair of a walk in the garden to see art. That’s why I wanted to have it in the springtime because you see the blossoms on the flowers and trees and that kind of brings it back to the art when you see that.” We both enjoyed the idea that the pollinating garden was a good place for the cross-pollination of artists’ ideas and inspirations.

New this year, Kaylor added a non-prohibitive entry fee for artists of only $10 per table to help fund the event’s advertising, incidentals, and her production of a new event banner. Also key – a “gift bag to all the artists with some goodies in it.” 

And how does Kaylor feel about the day’s events unfolding? “I think it’s great,” she said. “I want everybody to sell at least one item. Then you feel like you’ve really done something…. And you’ll notice the artists are talking to the other artists at their tables…. So, that’s another networking situation that can lead to another job. You just never know where things might lead.”

Next to Kaylor, Keith Thurston, representing the CHART Foundation at the event, and a member of VPIS, agreed the day was going well. “I think it’s worked out wonderfully. It’s a beautiful day. People are out enjoying it. It’s just the right atmosphere. This is what we want in the park. And it makes Falls Church a great place to live… And you get a little extra enjoyment because it’s next to the Farmers Market. So it’s providing the right blend.”

Soon, Kaylor took me to see her own artworks and the banner she created for the festival. “We have a lot of closet artists here and they don’t know how to market their work,” she said. “But they’re good at what they do. So this is just an opportunity for them to get exposed…. The majority of these artists are novices when it comes to marketing. They’re not really in the league of going from place, to place, to place to sell their work. So this gives them the opportunity to sort of feel that part of their art.”

“This is something I used to tell my kids when I was an art teacher,” Kaylor said. “That in order for you to be good at what you do, you have to get exposure. If you don’t get out there and expose your work as much as you can, nobody’s going to know what you can do.”

Kaylor was keeping her eyes peeled for former arts students. She’s proud of many who've become Art Directors today. “So I asked them and said, ‘Please come by so I can tout you around!’” [Laughs]. When students pass Kaylor on the sidewalk many years after graduation and say, “You were my art teacher!,” she’s always moved. 

Returning to how the day’s organizing went, Kaylor said, “The City has been great.” She particularly commended Cherry Hill Farmhouse Coordinator Holly Irwin, saying she “was really open to giving us the space.” She also found the Arts and Humanities Council “very open.”

“I just talked to a lady who moved here from Austin, Texas and she just moved behind the Falls Church Whole Foods in that old historical section of town,” Kaylor said. “And she’s a blogger and has a lot of older women on her blog and she said, ‘What I’m going to do after visiting here [today], is I’m going to tell all these 70-year-old women who don’t know what to do with their lives, to move to Falls Church so that you’re part of this art scene!’”

At a children’s art table, co-organizer and member-at-large of the Arts and Humanities Council, Mary Sellers, is busy helping a young girl create a “Bagel Stamp” work of flowers – the technique named for the use of a bagel piece as a “brush” for the paints.

“Everyone can be an artist,” Sellers believes. “Everyone has it in them to be creative. And it’s so good for our brain and development and being in our community together is really important.”

“It’s fun. Yeah, it’s a lot of fun,” Sellers said of teaching young kids how to create artworks. “I have two young children myself, so a lot of times, with art markets there are some things for kids, but not a lot. So, I wanted to make sure that kids have a place to play and really engage…. And it turned out to be a really lovely day. I’m hopeful to hear that a bunch of people sold some stuff and actually stimulated the economy in their own way.”

Strolling around the gardens, I chatted with a few of the artists. Decorated glass magnets by artist Noel Welch of Perpetually Confused Glass – and a middle school teacher at The Village School – soon caught my eye.

Asked how she thought the day was progressing, Welch said, “I think it’s really exciting to have something like this in my now backyard – because I just moved here a couple of months ago – and it was really accessible and the fee wasn’t prohibitive for artists to display, which was really appreciated. It was only $10 and the organizer was really kind and made us these little baskets of food with a cookie in it – a swag bag – and I’ve done shows in the past that don’t necessarily have great foot traffic, but having it next to the Farmers Market just makes it really accessible.”

Events like these in the community are a major reason Welch is so pleased to have moved to The Little City from Silver Spring. “It feels very welcoming,” Welch said of the festival. “It’s nice to have such supporting people. Not just the committee, but the people who put it together and the people who walk through are so welcoming to talk to. So I’m very happy we have this outlet.” 

And Welch loves living here. “I love it in Falls Church, “ she said. “I’m very happy here. It’s so walkable and a lot of things are so accessible. And the community just feels like an actual community. There are people who just come together…. There’s so much to access in such a small area.”

Colorful Still Life artist Emma Daisy Hill was also pleased with how the day was turning out. “I was worried about rain but it all came out of the forecast and it’s nice and sunny right now. And everyone’s walking around. And we’ve got live music next to us. And it’s very festive, which I’m happy about and it’s just so fun. I’ve seen some people I know and spoken to some arts people I didn’t know. So it’s really fun. It’s a great community event.”

Hill currently lives in Falls Church and paints out of a garage studio that’s not ideal because it’s not air conditioned. “But when the weather’s nice, I can just go out there and work on my paintings and when the weather’s cold I can bring out a space heater. And it’s a space that works so I can put my things in there,” she said. 

At the entrance table to the event, member-at-large of the Arts and Humanities Council, Ari Autor, another key organizer for the festival, also said she was “feeling great” about how the day was going. “We’re really grateful that we’ve had great weather. We’ve had amazing support from the community. Our partners, Creative Cauldron, were here. Falls Church Arts. The Vietnamese Literary and Artistic Club. And then, of course, artists from the community. We’re happy to be able to add to the arts and humanities scene in Falls Church. And it’s really important. It really brings a lot to the City.”

Asked why the arts and humanities are so important to the City of Falls Church, Autor said, “‘What’s past is prologue’ – famous Shakespeare quote. You know we learn from the past and it informs our future."

“And as far as the arts go, I’m actually a dance teacher and a dancer with Every Body Dance at the Falls Church Community Center,” Autor continued. “And I’ve been doing that intermittently for many years, taking small breaks for private things with my kids, but I see the joy in the children and getting them to be able to engage and feel creative and it builds confidence and it's empowering. It adds, of course, to the beauty of our community.”

For Autor, a key design element for the day was to have kids involved in creating art. “The activities were designed to help the children engage. We were actually pleased to have an adult too, making a Mother’s Day card for her own mom. I think the arts keep us young at-heart and doing art gives us a chance to connect with our Self that we knew before anyone ever told us that certain colors were better or shapes were better. I think it’s really important for individuals and families to connect with art. It makes us feel fundamentally human at a time when AI and many other influences in our culture are so competitive and mass-produced.”

Autor also learned two new things at the fair. “So, Mary [Sellers] worked with Little City Bagels and they were very gracious to suggest a bagel art activity to make flowers – Bagel Stamping – and so I actually like this event because I learned two new things – that you could make art from bagels and that [Little City Bagels] is here at the Farmers Market. So, I’m going to be buying my bagels there!"

"So, the importance of these events is to connect community and to connect people to make our Little City," Autor said. "You know, we are little, but we are getting bigger and events like this just bring us together.”

By Christopher Jones