Artisan Fair Unites Two Tracts

Pros, amateurs, kids to show work Nov. 8 at Palo Alto event for community building
By Dave Weinstein
CA-Modern Insider
The November 8 Greenmeadow Artisan Art Fair brought together two different Eichler neighborhoods, from Palo Alto and Mountain View. Above: Nine-year-old artist Danielle Itskovich and her mother, Elena, in front of their Eichler, which is near Greenmeadow Park. Photo: Dave Weinstein

In the life of a neighborhood, often it is the small things that make a big difference: a butterfly bookmark crafted from resin, a jar of olive oil, a fond recollection of a holiday market in Munich.

All have come together to create an event on Saturday, November 8 that united two tracts designed by Joe Eichler in the 1950s—Greenmeadow of Palo Alto and nearby Monta Loma of Mountain View.

The event was called the Greenmeadow Artisan Art Fair. Besides 30 or so featured artisans, the Fair also included food trucks and a band. The event took place in Greenmeadow Park, 303 Parkside Drive.

 

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Sophie Fron's design for totes, posters, and postcards show her own Greenmeadow home and the redwood trees that are a feature of Greenmeadow Park. Photo: courtesy Sophie Fron

About 80 percent of the artisans live in Eichlers, the organizers say. The event benefited the Greenmeadow Community Scholarship fund. Their first fair was held in 2022.

"It is wonderful how they are so welcoming to each other," Nicole Babaoglu says of the two Eichler neighborhoods, where homes going for $4 million may suggest that these places no longer evoke their humble origins as middle-class subdivisions.

A visit to the fair, however, with its dose of downhome Americana in the midst of Silicon Valley, will disprove this notion immediately.

 

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Nicole Babaoglu (above) runs a booth, featuring her True Olive olive oil, at an earlier Artisan Fair. Photo: courtesy Nicole Babaoglu

Among the artisans will be Nicole, who resides in Monta Loma, selling her award-winning True Olive olive oil, made from her husband's family groves in the Dardanelles of Turkey. In Monta Loma, she says, "Neighbors come by and knock on the door [to buy oil]."

"I love that it's part of our community," she says of her oil. "The reason we love our Eichler is the neighborhood feeling. It's why we have stayed there and have grown our family."

Also at the fair will be budding artisan-entrepreneur Danielle Itskovich, 9, selling jewelry crafted from resins and other ingredients. "I just like making art, and I just like selling the things I make," she says. Her mom, Elena, says Danielle ramps up production ahead of the fair to produce enough merchandise.

 

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Some of young Danielle Itskovich’s jewelry. Photo: Dave Weinstein

Sophie Fron, a young woman who grew up in Greenmeadow and recently majored in art at Scripps College, in Claremont, will be showing Eichler-themed art in the form of totes, postcards, and posters, based on her own home.

The work on display will come from a variety of makers, say Heather Schöll, of Monta Loma and Carmen Rodwell, of Greenmeadow, two of the three organizers, along with Janice Lin.

Artisans include fine artists, ceramicists, leather makers, producers of artisanal foods, and others. They range from professionals to amateurs to children, who may be a bit of both. "It was like a nice combination of mature artists and children as well," says Elena Itskovich of past fairs.