MILLERTON — Main Street turned into an open-air artisans’ market Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 5 and 6, for the Voice of Art’s Fine Art Festival, drawing crowds from across the tri-state region to downtown Millerton.
The Fine Art Festival drew artists from across New York and Connecticut, selling paintings, photographs, jewelry and other fine art goods. Artists had tents set up along the Harlem Valley Rail Trail and in the front yard of the Millerton Inn on Main Street, providing two hubs for visitors to meet artists and shop.
Falls Village, Connecticut, resident and abstract photographer Tom Hall was selling prints of his photographs near the Rail Trail last weekend. He said the festival was the third he had brought his work to since committing to his abstract fine art photographic practice.
“I started doing this abstract photography seriously about five years ago,” Hall said. “This year we just started coming out to some festivals and trying it out.”
Hall started out in photography working on Wall Street, producing photo and video shoots for clients in the finance industry. He left that work shortly after the covid-19 pandemic began, moved up to Falls Village and shifted into fine art work.
Hall said he draws inspiration from abstract and modernist artists of the 20th century — Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock to name a few. He aims to use the camera and light like a paint brush to create abstract images. The resulting photographs are stunning fields of bizarre colors and textures that resemble abstract expressionist paintings, but not everything he creates is completely non-representational.
Another fascination is liminal spaces, and how even non-abstract images can create unsettling and inexplicable feelings in a viewer when devoid of context. Images that make sense at face value — such as two paintings on a patterned wall or a small, vacant shed overlooking a corn field — can cause dread or confusion if composed in photographs that intentionally obscure important details or information.
“It’s like, ‘what am I looking at?’” Hall said. “It makes your feelings abstract, even though you see what it is. It makes you feel a little off.”
Madeline Hartwell, left, visits Tom Hall’s vendor tent along the Harlem Valley Rail Trail during The Voice of Art’s Fine Art Festival in Millerton.Photo by Nathan Miller
Justine and Victor Valla in their studio with a painting of Victor’s,”Jonah and the Whale.” Robin Roraback 
