Colorful Creations Come to Frederick County with Art Sculptures

Colorful Creations

Come to Frederick County

Downtown Frederick Art Sculpture. Middletown Main Street Sculpture.

Thurmont Main Street Sculpture.

New Market Main Street Sculpture.

By Vickie Grinder

Frederick County Maryland is home to five designated Maryland Main Street Communities and are also accredited National Main Streets under the National Main Street Center, a subsidiary of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. These five Main Street communities include Brunswick, Downtown Frederick, New Market, Middletown, and Thurmont. These five Main Street communities collaborated on a public, temporary art display titled “Art on Main” to celebrate their towns with a unique tailor-made tile sculpture crafted by Maryland artist and ceramicist, Parran Collery to reflect the distinctive landscapes of each town. This project persevered through a pandemic with design and installation of all five sculptures. What’s interesting about these five sculptures is that every decorative tile incorporated into the sculptures were created by residents of each community. Artist Parren Collery had scheduled workshops in April 2020 in each of the five communities to create the tiles to be installed into the sculptures, but then came the pandemic shutdown. At that point, Parren made clay kits complete with paints with an instructional video and were distributed to each town. Residents carved out the clay tiles to reflect their own individual art, and were returned to Parren to be fired in her kiln and created these colorful creations! A big shout out to Frederick County Tourism/visitfrederick.org, for the funding provided to make this collaboration a reality! Be sure to visit each Main Street to see the exclusive sculptures and explore how unique each of these Maryland Main Street Communities really are! To learn more about the “Art on Main” Sculptures go to: https://artonmainst.org