Vivian Navarro Cortes and Savannah Rae Sanchez
Beneath rows upon rows of white tents, paintings filled with curiosity cover temporary walls as sunlight catches the translucent glow of a carefully crafted glass creation. The magnificent art may be what draws people into the booth, but the artist holds an entire story behind it.
Art in the Park brings together local and out-of-state vendors to showcase and sell their work, ranging from handmade crafts, fine art and food.
Noelle Dass, an artist from Spokane, Washington expressed the joy she experiences from her paintings centered on animals, nature and color.
“I’ve always loved animals. You know, sometimes it’s easier to connect with animals than humans,” Dass said.
Through her paintings, Dass uses animals to convey deep human emotions that generate a connection with audiences.
“So that’s kind of what inspires me too is kind of lessons I’ve learned in life and how to just kind of share that with people in a fun way though like a fun happy way,” Dass said.
While Dass is grateful for the opportunity to showcase her work at Art in the Park, the process of getting there and the vulnerability that comes with showcasing her work before strangers can take a toll on an artist.
She explains how as an artist, she has had to learn to adapt to that uncertainty.
“You have to adjust the way you’re thinking so that you can view the positive out of every situation,” Dass said.
Her purpose in her art makes people happy especially in the world that we live in, but people seem to represent her art as her identity.
“When people come in and say ‘you must have a happy childhood’, or they want to ask me about my childhood,” Dass said. “I just might say, ‘well, you know, I wasn’t particularly happy, but that’s why I created this to make my own happiness, that way I can sort of be authentic but positive at the same time.’”
Her creative endeavors became a form of expressing her own happiness and being able to share it with others. That fulfillment from self expression extends forward, as other vendors have also found unexpected paths that have led them to creating work that provides them a sense of purpose, including Alessia Cantabone, who began her search for a new passion after moving to Boise from Italy 15 years ago
“I took a lot of classes around the valley of different things. I did pottery, watercolor. I did volunteering, and then I stumbled on fused glass, and I kind of fell in love with it,” Cantabone said.
What began as experimentation soon became an unlocked hidden passion she continued to pursue for nearly a decade and a half. Cantabone specifically described working with fused glass as “addictive,” with each creation leaving her with the need to make another.
“The more you do, the more you want to do it,” Cantabone said. “I get such a boost. Like an energy drink.”
That sense of fulfillment grows when she witnesses the admiration and joy that her art brings to others. Every purchase brings her another sense of fulfillment, particularly because this began as a hobby and now it has become her life’s work.
“It just makes you happy to have a lot of positive feedback,” Cantabone said. “I think it’s rare for us to find a job in something we love to do.”
For Jeff Owen, a metal sculptor, his inspiration came from his father-in-law, Chester Christison who gave Owen a welder to make his art come to life.
His art consists of abstract pieces, the sculptured fish that he created have passed down from person to person making them a popular piece in his collection.
“They fall in love with it. They see something they haven’t seen. They love it, and they get it,” Owen said.
The abstract art doesn’t necessarily need a story behind it for onlookers to be able to appreciate the art itself.
Whether something is crafted to spark joy, born from an unexpected passion or simply created for someone to fall in love with, each piece of art carries something that visitors can’t simply take home: the years of experimentation, hard work and passion that brought its artist to Art in the Park in the first place.
