Marita Bitans named featured artist for Medina County Park District’s Nature Art Fest

The popular annual Nature Art Fest will be hosted by the Medina County Park District again this year on Nov. 8-9 at the Oenslager Nature Center near Sharon Center.

Local artist Marita Bitans will be one of the artists selling their nature-related artwork at the indoor show. Bitans specializes in producing digitally altered photographs of local plants and flowers.

Bitans is an award-winning artist and former president of the Medina County Art League. Her family fled Latvia in 1944 when the Russians invaded. They eventually immigrated to the U.S. and settled in Ohio with the help of their farmer sponsors, later moving to Cleveland.

As a youth, Bitans was artistically inclined and gravitated to the Cleveland Institute of Art and later Ohio State University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts. She specialized in medical illustration and worked for 22 years at Metro General in Cleveland as a medical illustrator. She now lives in the Medina area.

Bitans doesn’t just take a photo and put it in a frame. She is drawn to nature-related subject matter that has strong contrasts, texture and shapes. She carefully chooses her subject matter and positions her camera to enhance the artistic effect of the image.

She has an eye for composition that makes a dramatic image. She does not crop her photos to produce her artwork; instead, she digitally alters her photos with computer software to enhance the subject matter. She makes her own prints in her studio, but she produces only one print per image, so each is a one-of-a-kind original.

Bitans also makes all of her own mats and frames her work herself to achieve a complete artistic statement.

Nature Art Fest will be held at the Oenslager Nature Center, just north of Sharon Center on Highway 94 (6100 Ridge Road). It will be open Saturday, Nov. 8, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, Nov. 9, from noon to 4 p.m.

Bitans will be there along with other artists from the Medina County Art League. Visitors can stop by her booth to see her full framed artwork, matted photographic art, and note cards featuring scenes from nature.