Melissa Pandina is an award winning artist (BFA from MassArt) whose work has been internationally published and sold. Growing up as an Army Brat exposed Melissa to many cultures and instilled a great love of listening to peoples stories. This love shows in her work being dedicated to portraiture and bringing peoples’ stories to life. She has been featured in Professional Artist Magazine and had  a piece hang in the Berkshire Museum of Art and Framingham Art Museum.  Her work can also be seen in large scale murals. The largest being murals in Fitchburg and Springfield. In her Mural work, she uses her traditional oil painting skills and translate them into house paint. She is passionate about creating murals WITH the community, so the community feels the art is theirs and that they had a hand in creating it. She has done public arts pieces and murals across Massachusetts. She is a winner of the Saara Parker Painting Prize from Fitchburg Museum and has won 1st Place at Several Chalk Art Festivals and in the Boston 19th Amendment Poster contest. Oil is her primary medium, although she also works with egg tempera, Acrylic and watercolor. She teaches non-credit painting at Holyoke Community College. When not painting, she can be found doing crafts with her small children and hiking with her dog.  @deshriastudio

 

Shara Osgood has been an artist her whole life.  She has a BFA from School of Visual Arts and over 30 years as a professional artist: face painting, painting in acrylics & oils on canvas, branding & logo design, working in mixed media and mural painting.  Shara is passionate about the “story” & flow in art.  Every picture is a conversation.  Her passion for mural painting is also a passion for community engagement & support.  Shara tells the stories of communities, helping to amplify messages and concepts; making people feel heard and valued.  Shara is a classically trained painter and graphic designer.  She excels at iconography: the art of creating simplified symbolic imagery that evokes clear and concise messages.  Murals are an excellent medium for this type of communication. She understands that working on the large scale of murals is a unique opportunity for messaging and reaching a large audience.  She takes that responsibility seriously.  As a resident of Fitchburg for over 18 years, Shara knows the community and has been a force behind many public art projects in Fitchburg. 

Since 2021, Shara has painted the “Heart Opening” mural in the Fitchburg Public Library parking lot, “Reaching Towards Change” on the Cushing Street pedestrian walkway and the CMI “Power of Art” mural on Boulder Drive, assisted in the painting of the Abolitionist Park mural as well as completing several other murals outside of Fitchburg.  Power of Art was completely community engaged & speaks to the thoughts and ideas collected in a listening session with art stewards in Fitchburg.  Shara is a resident artist at Main Street Studios and a member of the Cultural Alliance.  This puts her in a unique place to truly understand the mission of the Alliance and the Main Street Studios. @sharaosgoodart

The City of Fitchburg seeks to expand its identity as an arts and culture destination within the North Central MA region, a place for creatives and residents to learn, connect, engage, and create economic opportunities through arts and culture.   In 2023, the  City engaged the arts community through a Call for Temporary Art to tell this story to the public through an installation depicting the variety and diversity of art and creatives in our city, as well as invite the public to think about what types of art they would like to see in their community. The City was thrilled with the results. 

 

The City of Fitchburg understands how important partnerships are to achieving our goals.  This project could not have happened without the partnership and support of the Fitchburg Cultural Alliance, the local arts community and the funders of this project, The Forcast for Public Arts and The New England Foundation For the Arts.