This page was exported from Caledon Citizen [ https://caledoncitizen.com ] Export date:Thu Sep 24 23:08:14 2026 / +0000 GMT ___________________________________________________ Title: Headwaters Arts marks 30th anniversary with annual Fall Festival --------------------------------------------------- By KATHRYN FRASER Local Journalism Initiative Reporter On September 17, Headwater Arts celebrated its 30th anniversary with its Annual Fall Festival and the Opening Night Soiree of the Open Juried Art Show Sale at the Alton Mill Arts Centre.  This event featured more than 70 creations with a wide variety of mediums used, celebrating art, artists and creativity.  This year, organizers received over 200 submissions from 117 different artists.  Deb Menken is one of the artists that was selected to have not one, but two pieces of her work displayed in this year's show.  Menken has been in nine Headwaters Arts shows so far and inspiration for her piece, Placed Upon the Rock, came when she was working on another landscape while in Newfoundland in 2024.  “I did a two-week artist retreat, and I was at the bottom of Conception Bay where there's a highway that goes up and a highway that goes on to St. John's. It was at that cross section where the landscape just looked a little bit creepy, because you don't see a soul and there's just this sort of really barren landscape, gray with this little covering of green on everything,” says Menken. “It just really felt like the green cheese moon.” The evening also served as Headwaters Arts' flagship fundraising event of the year.  During the celebration, many members of the community came out in support of the artists.  Pat Hertzberg is another artist who has work featured in the show. Her piece, titled Joy, was used fibre as its medium and had small lines and loops flying all over the piece as those in attendance took a closer look.  For Hertzberg, this piece was special to her as it came after getting good news from a test result, but it also served as a way for the people who viewed it to take them away from all of the anger and angst that the world is dealing with and to be able to see some joy.  “I wanted to create an art piece that really helped to take them away from that, that when you look at it, you just get lost and feel joy,” says Hertzberg. “I started out with fabrics, a number of different fabrics, dozens and dozens of different fabrics, then I dyed some more to make sure that I had the full spectrum of what I wanted to create. Then I cut them up into all different sizes of pieces so that they wouldn't fit together like a typical quilt. I didn't want it to be a quilt. I wanted it to be far more abstract.” Hertzberg added she had lot of fun playing with different colours and putting the brightness of the colours into the piece.   “I wanted to then play with juxtaposing the colours, putting them beside each other, and creating that excitement that you get from putting pink and orange beside each other, different shades beside each other,” says Hertzberg. “Juxtaposing the colours was a big part of the joy I had in creating it, and then, when all the composition is done, I then put the stitching on top of it. The stitching is also a joyful sort of thing because I did it in a very whimsical way.” All pieces in the show are sale and attendees had the opportunity to participate in a silent auction where they were able to bid on a wide variety of items, including various bottles of wine and several rounds of golf at TPC Toronto at Osprey Valley.  Various refreshments were offered throughout the evening for those in attendance.  After a few hours of guests viewing the artwork, attendees were led outside to an open building where members of Headwaters Arts thanked everyone for attending and supporting the event.  Dufferin-Caledon MPP Sylvia Jones also attended the event and presented Headwaters Arts with a special plaque to commemorate 30 years.  In addition to the speeches, several awards, including Headwaters Arts 2026 Student Scholarship Award and Juror's Awards for prize-winning artists, were presented. First to third place and honorable mentions were awarded to artists at the event and were given ribbons that were then attached to their pieces. Local art lovers will also have the chance to participate in the People's Choice Awards by filling out a ballot. These ballots will be accepted through October 4. Valeria Kouznetsova's The Blue Kingdom received an Honourable Mention ribbon, Courtney Chard's Ringmaster received Top Honour 3rd Award, and Haley Marfleet's A Box From Crumbl was selected for the Curators Choice Award.  Nancy Lennon's Blue Silhouette Reeds placed Third, Patricia MacDonald's What the World Needs Now is Love placed Second, and Iris Ranieri's Forest River was awarded First and a Best in Show ribbon.  This was Ranieri's second time submitting a piece of her art to Headwaters Arts and said she was very excited to be given the Best in Show award for the night and said her inspiration for Forest River was inspired by her travels. “A lot of my most recent work is based on nature, but especially BC, Colorado, sort of like rocky, rugged landscapes, just speak to me and then, most recently, incorporated in some of waterfalls and rushing water and that type of things. Inspiration comes just basically being in nature,” says Ranieri.  To find out more information about Headwaters Arts, visit www.headwatersarts.org. --------------------------------------------------- Images: --------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- Post date: 2026-09-24 12:08:26 Post date GMT: 2026-09-24 16:08:26 Post modified date: 2026-09-24 12:08:34 Post modified date GMT: 2026-09-24 16:08:34 ____________________________________________________________________________________________ Export of Post and Page as text file has been powered by [ Universal Post Manager ] plugin from www.gconverters.com