Art show, art source

EDMONDS — Planning to stroll among the scores of booths at this weekend's Edmonds Arts Festival, checking out the art and artists? Better think again.

They just may be checking you out.

Painter Patty Forté Linna is a people watcher. And she finds subjects among the crowds at the annual festival.

"I went out of my booth, I was walking through the Frances Anderson center, and inside there was a string quartet of four young people playing," she said. "I was fascinated, and of course, I had my camera with me."

She took a photo and hung onto the image for a long time. Eventually, she made a painting of a young violinist from the quartet, placing her on an Edmonds beach at sunset. She titled it "For an Audience of One."

The painting was selected for this year's Edmonds Arts Festival poster, a coveted honor for local artists.

Look for Linna and other artists at the 46th annual festival, which opens Friday at the Anderson center, 700 Main St. The free festival, which runs through Sunday, will include two stages offering such acts as the Guarneri Underground, Will Stedman's Hollywood Educated Parrots and the award-winning Edmonds-Woodway High School jazz band.

There will be 20 food vendors, a children's plaza with art projects and about 240 artwork booths, as well as an indoor juried art show. There also will be a Junior Art Exhibit in the Anderson center, showing the work of more than 1,000 Edmonds School District students.

Each year, the three-day event brings up to 100,000 people to Edmonds. It's the region's second-largest arts fair, after the Bellevue Art Museum Fair, which is scheduled for July 25-27 this year.

"You watch the town come alive. Everyone seems to get ready for this festive event," said Terry Vehrs of the Edmonds Arts Festival Foundation board of directors.

"The shopkeepers, the city park people are making sure every corner of the city is ready."

Though admission is free, commissions from art sales contribute about $50,000 to the festival foundation, which gives out scholarships and runs community arts projects.

Linna's equivalent in the junior poster division is artist Sabrina Bounds, a second-grader at Maplewood Elementary School in Edmonds and creator of "Rainy Day."

With Linna's poster honor comes a monthlong solo show, so folks can see her work through June at the Edmonds Arts Festival Museum Gallery.

Linna makes people-centered paintings, whether it's a worshipper at a French church, a merchant in a kitchen store in California's Napa Valley or a coffeehouse scene in Edmonds.

Her work has drawn the interest of national corporations. Last year, General Motors selected her and 19 other artists around the country to paint pictures of its new Chevrolet SSR. Each painting of the car will have a strong regional backdrop, so Linna's painting is set at Seattle's Post Alley.

But it's people paintings that Linna, 43, loves most.

"I would love to paint people in their very favorite place because to me, being around food and eating is such a celebration of life every day," she said.

"It's not that we have to wait for a holiday. There's simple pleasures every day that are worth celebrating and painting."

Diane Wright: 425-745-7815 or dwright@seattletimes.com