Stephanie Sherratt’s All Hallows Art Fest brings spooky artists to Petaluma

“I’m a Halloween nut, I admit it,” says Stephanie Sherratt. “My husband is really into Christmas, and I’m really into Halloween. My mom was obsessed with Halloween, too. Every year, she always made it special for us kids. For me, Halloween is a warm, wonderful thing, a nostalgic feeling that I keep alive in my own house, and also through the Halloween art show.”

That’s why, around Petaluma, Sherratt has become known as “The Halloween Lady.”

It’s a nickname she delights in. She’s certainly earned it.

Sherratt, a Petaluma resident since 1998, is the owner-operator of All Hallows Art Fest, a reincarnation, of sorts, of the Petaluma-based Halloween-inspired art and collectible showcase formerly known as Halloween and Vine. That supernaturally popular show, held for 22 years every September at Hermann’s Sons Hall, has been co-owned for five years by Sherratt and another owner, who, according to Sherratt, sold her share to a pair of new owners - who elected to split from their partner, and are now operating their own show in the South Bay.

One of the first things Sherratt did was change the name.

“There’s always been confusion about the name,” Sherratt says. “A lot of local people didn’t know quite what it was. People thought it was some sort of winery event. ‘All Hallows Art Fest’ is a lot clearer. This show is about two things - Halloween and the work of amazing artists inspired by Halloween.”

Speaking of those artists - many of them ranking among the top hand-craft artists in the country - Sherratt is quick to point out that one thing that has not changed is the line-up of national art-makers who annually come to Petaluma to show off and sell their latest one-of-a-kind creations.

“All of the artists who’ve been with the show for twenty years have stayed with me,” she says. “The Petaluma show has become well-known around the country, seriously. Some line up at five in the morning sometimes, to be the first inside. Some of our regular artists tend to sell out in under fifteen minutes. Collectors and Halloween fans come from all over the country to buy the one-of-a-kind, vintage Halloween collectibles and décor that we showcase. It hasn’t been hard attracting the best artists in the country to participate.”

Explaining this annual mania, Sherratt says that for a certain type of person - those who have a strong nostalgic fondness for Halloween, who hold childhood memories of trick-or-treating, Halloween games, and special decorations - Oct. 31 is more emotionally significant and important a holiday than Christmas, New Year’s, or the 4th of July. That’s why Sherratt’s event creates such an uproar, she says. It’s because she, and the artists on display, share that enthusiasm.

“Every year,” Sherratt says, “people come up and thank me for doing this. They say, ‘I’m on a budget, but when it comes to Halloween, I’m willing to spend some money on the right decorations.’?”

Sherratt has been in the antique and craft business for years. She is an antique dealer at Summer Cottage Antiques in Petaluma, and once ran a wholesale soap and lotion business. Her company, named Paper, Fabric, Gliitter, produces craft kits employing those same aforementioned items. Whenever setting up an antique display at the store, Sherratt says she always makes room for what she calls “Halloween ephemera.” She’s always finding ways to turn antique Halloween invitations or other items into new works of art, and generally begins decorating for Halloween in early September.

“When I was a kid, our great family friends were the Hinkles,” she recalls. “They would have an amazing party every year. All the kids would go out trick-or-treating together with our pillowcases, and then come back and dump our candy on the floor, play Pin the Tail on the Ghost, switch costumes, and then go out for more trick-or-treating.”

The artists Sherratt recruits for the All Hallows Art Fest tend to have similar stories.

“It’s what we all have in common,” she says. “We’re all just crazy for Halloween.”

Most of the artists on display are members of the Halloween Folk Art Society, which Sherratt founded, and currently boasts over 5,000 members. Sherratt says that one of the things making her shows so special is her insistence that everything in the show be hand-crafted and one-of-a-kind.

“Nothing mass produced, that’s a 22 year tradition,” she says. “I had an artist who’s been with me for years call up and say that, for cost effectiveness, they were going to start mass-producing some of their art pieces. It broke my heart, but I had to say no to show-casing their work anymore. It’s just too important that people know these art works are all originals that you can’t find anywhere else.”

Some of the artists whose ooky-spooky creations will be on sale this year include Colleen Moody, of Danville. Her handmade witch dolls and cat sculptures are made of air-dried clay, decorated with vintage scraps of fabric.

David Everett, a particular favorite of Halloween art collectors, makes delightfully off-the-wall sculptures of pumpkins, skeletons, ghosts and monsters, all with pleasingly goofy expressions.

Kat Anderson uses polymer clay to craft her goth-inspired dolls, everything from Day of the Dead-themed characters to classic movie characters like Beetlejuice and other Tim Burton icons. Mandy Palumbo’s “October Oddities” are imaginative paper-clay creatures that would also not be out-of-place in a Tim Burton movie.

Caitlin McCarthy sketches and paints evocative portraits of what she calls, “dark dreamy women in the form of seers, priestesses and witches.”

The list goes on and on.

“Each year, I try to keep the show new and fresh,” Sherratt says. “I always save some spaces for the up-and-coming artists, special people who are new to the scene. And trends tend to change. Skeletons might be huge for a year or two, and then maybe the ghost thing comes back big for a while. Every show is different, every year.”

Sherratt notes that the art attendees are witness to tends to be so much fun to see, some folks come without planning to buy anything. They come just to look, or to inspire their kids. Admission to the show is five dollars, by the way.

“So many of these artists make such great, amazing, impossibly wonderful things,” Sherratt says. “It’s always such a thrill to be one of the first people to see them. Sometimes, I wish I could buy them all myself. But that would be fair, would it?”

(Email David at david.templeton@arguscourier.com)