Fine but not highfalutin

By Terry Date

» tdate@eagletribune.com

HAVERHILL — The art is fine, the festival relaxed and the feel never highfalutin.

For at least half the Greater Haverhill Arts Association’s 55 years it has hosted the Haverhill Art Festival on the Bradford Common.

This year’s edition is Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and will showcase the work of more than 40 artists.

The festival shares the green with a farmers’ market.

“Get your fresh garden tomatoes, peppers and eggplants.”

“Get your fresh paintings, drawings, photography and sculptures.”

This event is one of seven exhibitions the association hosts each year. This event, however, bazaar-like and held in the open air, invites interaction and while adding a peaceful, easy feeling.

Some of the association’s 130 members have joined it by way of the Bradford festival. Artist Kate Pazzanese is one of them.

The 2011 Haverhill High graduate who then attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst first learned about the arts organization in 2019 on a festival foray — also a first — to see a friend’s work.

She now chairs the association’s eight-member exhibit committee, composed of volunteers who install and take down association shows yearround in museums, libraries and other venues.

Pazzanese will have a booth at the festival featuring her original artwork and reproduction prints.

She buys or barters works by other artists at the festival, as well, and hangs them in her home studio.

Melissa Casaletto, a fellow exhibit committee member and Haverhill High School graduate (Class of 2012), will be showing her work on the green, too.

SEE ART, PAGE 4

Artist Kate Pazzanese makes an illustrations of different plants growing in the garden behind her home studio in Reading. Pazzanese works in several different mediums and she tries to bring the outside into her work.

TIM JEAN/ Staff photo

Art

Both Pazzanese and Casaletto like painting the natural world and bringing the association’s work to the public.

While the festival only presents fine arts — not crafts — it remains a grounded event, Pazzanese says.

“I think especially because of our members, they make it a very relaxed, down-toearth kind of art festival,” she said.

Association member Debbie Shirley seconds that notion and credits the festival’s growth to its dedicated and outgoing volunteers.

“The Haverhill Art Festival has truly become a local tradition,” Shirley said.

“The last few years we have been sharing the common with the Haverhill Farmers Market which greatly increases attendance and a fun festival feeling.”

The Southern New Hampshire Ukulele Group will play a few midday sets, adding a downhome tenor to the day.

The word “Greater” in the Greater Haverhill Arts Association title has added significance, says Ann Jones, a former president and member since the mid-1990s.

The association attracts member from within and outside Haverhill.

Current President Michael Rossi, a retired Merrimack College English professor, says the association is especially active. Its year-round activities vary widely, attracting artists of every stripe and keeping the vibe alive.

The group has no brick-and-mortar address to maintain, which keeps its expenses low and memberships affordably priced, Rossi says.

A basic membership is $30, half that for students.

Haverhill connections to the arts association abound.

The 1971 founder and first president of the association was a local teacher and a Haverhill Gazette editor, Robert Gablosky, and a 1948 graduate of Haverhill High.

Pazzanese and Casaletto developed art skills under the direction of public school art teachers, including Susan Blim, Jeffrey Paszko and Mary Murphy.

Pazzanese and Casaletto have loved art since childhood.

At 10 or 11 years old Kate would come home from a day weeding on her grandparents’ farm in North Andover and put down in drawings what the experience had been like.

Melissa, at 4 or 5, drew dogs and cats and now continues to draw and paint animals, including horses and birds.

The association is an avenue for them to continue to make art as adults.

Their work and the works of dozens of other artist will be on display Saturday.

“Even if you are not in the market to buy a piece of art,” Shirley said, “artists appreciate the conversations and feedback they get from the public.”

Beverly Eskel of Methuen plays and sings songs with other members of the Southern New Hampshire Ukulele Group as they perform classic 50s and 60s at the Greater Haverhill Arts Association fine arts exhibit and sale on the Bradford Common last year.

TIM JEAN/ Staff photo