South Third Street in downtown Geneva will be the backdrop for the juried Geneva Arts Fair, an annual two-day event set for this coming weekend showcasing fine artisans from around the country.
The Geneva Arts Fair will be held from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, July 25-26, in downtown Geneva.
For more information about the Geneva Arts Fair, go to the Geneva Chamber of Commerce’s website at www.genevachamber.com.
Geneva painter Elizabeth Kindig – a still life and landscapes artist – will debut her paintings in front of the Kane County Historic Courthouse between James and Campbell streets during the upcoming fair.
She currently works in oils, acrylics and pastels. Kindig, who hails from Indiana, relocated to her husband’s hometown in Geneva two years ago.
“I often play with color and abstraction to evoke my memories of the farm where I grew up,” she said in a website statement.
Kindig found a niche in her love for painting.
“In my still life work, I seek to give renewed pride of place to those heirlooms that often get tucked away in an attic. As a child, I would spend hours searching through closets and drawers of the old farmhouse where my father and grandfather grew up, fostering an interest in the history and memories associated with the objects I found there. The time it takes to see the shapes, assess value relationships and gauge the color of the light in order to convey all of this through paint on the canvas feels like a way to honor the people, now passed on, for whom these objects were once significant,” she said.
“I have always been fascinated with the past and family history,” she said. “I started painting my own family’s heirlooms and it has blossomed to accepting commissions to paint other people’s family heirlooms.”
For one client, she painted a late grandfather’s Standard Oil work coat that he would wear on deliveries of oil and gas to farmers in Illinois.
“Her grandmother had hand-sewn his first name on the jacket and there was a sewn patch to repair a hole. I really wanted to capture those hand-sewn details,” Kindig said. “Now it’s an heirloom to pass on to the next generation.”
Her husband, Ross Adams, is from Geneva. They have a 7-year-old daughter, Maggie.
Kindig grew up in northwest Indiana and became a middle school humanities teacher. She decided to pursue her painting full-time when she came to Geneva.
“I am moved and motivated by my family’s history on the farm and the visual elements of the repetition of cornfields and the way grain silos catch the light throughout the day,” Kindig said.
Linda Girardi is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
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