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The 2007 Park Ave Summer Art Festival poster was designed and illustrated by Elaine Verstraete, a Rochester, New York area illustrator/artist since 1988, currently working from her Middlesex, NY studio.

Elaine has captured the fun and funky feeling of Park Ave during festival days in an impressionistic Parisian style. Everyone sees the festival through their own eyes, and Elaine’s light hearted, sophisticated interpretation captures the feeling of Park Avenue today –before, during, and after the festival!

She has illustrated many children's books with styles ranging from detailed figurative watercolors to colorful portraits for a series of "On My Own" biographies for Lerner Publishing and several others, including Cricket Magazine and Children's Television Workshop's "Creative Classroom" Magazine.

Having earned a BFA with honors from Syracuse University, Elaine also lived briefly in London, England and New York City. She teaches Illustration at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester.

The opportunity to create the poster for the Park Avenue Festival for 2006 is really wonderful and I am grateful to the committee for having confidence in me. I love working with watercolors because of their sophisticated results. I am a Park Avenue community resident and have great appreciation for the history and architecture that surrounds us here. I felt that it was important in this year’s poster to combine the lively atmosphere of the festival with some of the beautiful architecture and natural environment that has played host to the festival over the past 30 years.

The poster was created by Madeline Sturm, a New York based artist and musician. A former long time Rochesterian and graduate of the Eastman School of Music, Maddy plans to attend the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture in their MFA program. Most recently, she joined two other Eastman classmates to form Boom Design Group, Inc. to offer creative web and print design and to serve the artistic community through the company¹s proposal-based grants program.

The kind of image that Pittsford artist Chris Lyons is known for-simple images of everyday life that put a smile on your face.

Lyons said it was the perfect form of creative direction, adding he was inspired for his creation by sitting at a Park Avenue cafÈ one afternoon. One thing kept popping upflip flops. And I thought, that's it. A great summer icon. It hit me right away like a lightening bolt that flip flops would be the perfect image, Lyons said recently. I try to take everyday things and elevate them and make them into something you can look at, a piece of art.  Lyons, who went to school for illustration and was soon seduced by the world of advertising, now works out of his home and is represented by a firm in New York City.