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Date: 5/23/2023
NORTHAMPTON — For the last few years, Ludlow artist Chris Bordenca has been painting vintage toys that he grew up interacting with.
“I went on a 10-year hiatus from painting, and when I started to paint again, I couldn’t find anything that was clicking with me until I painted a still life of some of the toys that I had on my desk at the time,” Bordenca said. “And that was probably the most fun I’ve had painting in a long time.”
Bordenca — who used to paint murals for people — found his niche in 2018 following the long hiatus, and after that initial creation, he began unearthing his old 1970s and 1980s toys and scouring flea markets and eBay to find inspiration for future paintings.
“It was sort of like the first time I was painting specifically just for myself and not thinking so much about what other people wanted it to be,” Bordenca said.
His newfound passion manifests in a collection of flamboyant art on his website, with paintings that mix and match different toy worlds with the same creativity and imagination of a wide-eyed child. One of his paintings portrays an epic story that meshes He-Man, Luke, Maxx Steele, Jetfire and Optimus Prime defending Castle Grayskull, while another portrays a “treasure chest” of toy prizes one might have found in an old cereal box or during a trip to the dentist.
“Really, everything that you see in my paintings is everything I owned as a kid, or wished I could have owned as a kid,” said Bordenca, who grew up consuming the pop culture of the 1970s, 80s and early 90s through advertisements disguised as entertainment. “The design and creativity of all of these toys, and the imagination that they spark, and continue to spark, is super high.”
Bordenca’s passion for these toys and gadgets from that time period will be on full display at the “With Flying Colors” special exhibit at this year’s Paradise City Arts Festival in Northampton on Memorial Day weekend.
“All of these toys, they are filled with color,” Bordenca said. “It’s the perfect subject to explore color.”
The Paradise City Arts Festival is making its return at the Three County Fairgrounds with over 200 artists and craft-makers from 16 different states to show and sell their original works.
The festival, which has been around for almost three decades, will feature ceramics, paintings, decorative fiber, art glass, furniture, jewelry, metal, mixed media, photography, sculpture, wearable art and woodworking, according to the festival’s press release.
Beyond that, the festival typically hosts a central theme every year. Last fall, it was a theme called “The Wild Blue Yonder,” which featured art with all kinds of blue, including sapphires, lapis lazuli, as well as James Kitchen’s life-size “Steampunk Spaceship.”
This year’s theme is “With Flying Colors,” which will feature Bordenca’s art alongside other vibrant work encompassing the entirety of the color wheel.
“Color plays a pivotal role in all visual arts, whether in paint, clay, steel, stone or cloth,” the festival press release reads. “The interplay of light and dark, bright and dull, colors from opposite sides of the wheel — these allow artists to express emotions, tell stories, explore landscapes and create new ones.”
Bordenca, who said this is his first time at this festival, said his painting “Toy Chest 2” will be displayed at the “With Flying Colors” exhibit, and his booth will include all the paintings found on his website along with a couple of new ones he has not released yet.
“I look forward to meeting the public as well as the other artists there,” Bordenca said, when asked what he was looking forward to most. “Seeing people connect with the art themselves is the best. One of the things about painting what you love to paint is that the people who enjoy your work want to talk about the same things you love.”
Readers may visit the Paradise City Arts Festival to learn more about what will happen and at what times: https://festivals.paradisecityarts.com/spring-northampton-special-exhibit. Readers may also learn more about who is featured in the special exhibit this year.