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More than 30 local artists filled the gardens beside Cherry Hill Farmhouse on Saturday, May 3, turning the third annual Arts at the Park festival into a lively showcase for creators who do not often have opportunities to exhibit their work.

Held near the Farmers Market at the Community Center, 300 Park Ave., the spring event featured artist tables against a backdrop of blooming perennial gardens. Visitors browsed and purchased artwork, joined art walks and interactive activities, watched a plein air competition, and enjoyed live music and dance performances.

The festival was part of the city’s Art Day celebration, conceived in connection with World Art Day. Organizers said the setting around Cherry Hill Farmhouse, Cherry Hill Park and Falls Church City Hall allowed visitors to experience local artwork, public installations and live performances in a scenic, community-oriented environment.

The Falls Church Arts and Humanities Council was the primary sponsor. Other major sponsors included the city, the Arts, Theater, Culture, and History Foundation, known as CHART, and the Village Preservation and Improvement Society.

A garden showcase for emerging artists

Principal organizer Roxanne Kaylor said she had long wanted to create an event of this kind. After proposing that it be combined with the city’s World Art Day activities, she began organizing it with Arts and Humanities Council member Mary Sellers and other partners.

Kaylor, who taught art in Fairfax County schools for 30 years, envisioned the festival as a welcoming place where beginning artists could exhibit their work and meet other creative people.

Artists can become isolated while working in studios or at home, she said, and the festival gives them a chance to put their work before the public. Kaylor deliberately wanted the art walk to retain the feeling of a hometown garden gathering instead of becoming a large commercial show.

Spring was central to that vision. The flowers and blossoming trees offered a natural connection to the artwork while the gardens created a relaxed place for artists to exchange ideas.

A new $10-per-table fee helped cover advertising, incidental expenses and a festival banner made by Kaylor. Each participating artist also received a gift bag.

Kaylor hoped everyone would sell at least one piece, but she viewed the conversations among exhibitors as equally important. A connection made at the festival, she noted, could eventually lead to another opportunity or job.

Keith Thurston, who represented the CHART Foundation and is also a VPIS member, said the combination of pleasant weather, the park setting and the neighboring Farmers Market produced the atmosphere organizers wanted.

Kaylor said many talented local residents have little experience marketing their artwork or traveling between commercial shows. Arts at the Park lets them experience the public-facing side of being an artist without facing a costly entry barrier.

That exposure was also a lesson she emphasized during her teaching career: Artists must show their work if they want others to discover what they can do. Kaylor watched during the festival for former students, including some who have gone on to become art directors.

She credited the city, Cherry Hill Farmhouse coordinator Holly Irwin and the Arts and Humanities Council with supporting the event and making the space available.

Children create with an unusual tool

At the children’s activity table, Sellers helped a young participant make painted flowers using a piece of bagel as a stamp.

Sellers said creativity is available to everyone and can support development, mental well-being and connections within a community. As a parent of two young children, she wanted the festival to offer more than passive entertainment for families.

Children were given a dedicated place to play and make artwork, while adults could participate as well. One attendee used the activities to create a Mother’s Day card for her own mother.

Arts and Humanities Council member Ari Autor, another key organizer, said the festival received strong community support. Participants and partners included Creative Cauldron, Falls Church Arts, the Vietnamese Literary and Artistic Club and numerous local artists.

Autor, a dancer and teacher with Every Body Dance at the Falls Church Community Center, said creative activities can build confidence, empower children and add beauty to the community. Art also helps people connect with a more instinctive form of creativity, she said, amid a culture increasingly shaped by competition, mass production and artificial intelligence.

The bagel-stamping project also introduced Autor to Little City Bagels, which helped develop the activity and sells at the Farmers Market.

As Falls Church grows, Autor said, events centered on art can help preserve connections among the people who make up the Little City.

Artists welcome the affordable opportunity

Among the exhibitors was Noel Welch of Perpetually Confused Glass, whose display included decorated glass magnets. Welch, a middle school teacher at The Village School, had moved to Falls Church only a few months earlier.

She appreciated both the accessible location and the $10 fee, noting that other shows do not always provide enough visitor traffic to justify their costs. Locating the festival beside the Farmers Market brought a steady flow of people through the art displays.

Welch, who moved from Silver Spring, said the event reflected what she enjoys about Falls Church: its walkability, accessibility and strong sense of community. She found both organizers and visitors welcoming and was pleased to have a nearby outlet for her work.

Still-life painter Emma Daisy Hill also praised the festival’s atmosphere. Although she had worried about rain, the forecast cleared and sunshine accompanied the live music and crowds moving through the gardens.

Hill said the event gave her opportunities to reconnect with people she knew and meet others in the arts community. She currently paints in a garage studio in Falls Church, using a space heater in cold weather and working around the lack of air conditioning when it is hot.

For organizers and exhibitors alike, the festival offered more than a pleasant afternoon in the park. It gave emerging artists an affordable public platform, encouraged children and adults to create, and brought neighbors together around the work being made in their own community.