NORTHAMPTON — In celebrating their 30th anniversary with an art show titled “Fables & Folklore: Reframing the Classics,” the Paradise City Arts Festival unveiled a legend of their own last weekend.

Jenny Lind, a Swedish opera singer from the 19th century, performed twice in Northampton during her popular tour in the United States, including an initial concert before 1,800 people at Old First Church in 1851. She enjoyed the area so much during her that visit that the singer known as “the Swedish Nightingale” honeymooned in the western Massachusetts city and would later perform a second concert. When reporters asked Lind what she thought of Northampton, she said “this must be the paradise of America.”

The next day, every headline proclaimed that Northampton was “Paradise City,” and the name stuck.

Over a century later, Geoffrey and Linda Post set out to organize an arts festival in their hometown of Northampton. Few companies, Geoffrey said, used the phrase “Paradise City,” but the story was a part of the city’s history and culture that the couple wanted to embrace.

It took three years for the annual Paradise City Arts Festival to reach national press, but once the New York Times picked up the story, Northampton became paradise city once again.

As part of its 30th festival last weekend, Paradise City Arts commemorated their origin story with a community mural featuring trademarks of Northampton: the Connecticut River, Northampton City Hall, Jenny Lind and the phrase “Paradise of America.” The 14-foot-long mural, designed by renowned New Hampshire artist and professor Rick Freed, was executed over the long weekend by festival visitors of all ages who were excited to pick up a brush and celebrate the landmarks and history they themselves are a part of.

“People are involved in it, and they relate to it,” Freed said. “Ten years from now, people will look at this and they’ll relate to it, even if they don’t know what this place (Paradise City Arts Festival) is.”

Geoffery Post credits Marketing Director Mariah Swanson with the idea for a community mural, which organizers hope will soon go on display in City Hall. Swanson explained that she wanted to bring in interactive activities to the festival that entertains children as well as embraces the concept that painting is for everyone of all ages and skill sets. Very few people knew the story behind Paradise City’s name, so this particular way of exhibiting it both explains the history and embraces the organizations artistic roots.

“It’s been extremely exciting to be able to keep poking in and seeing the progress take place,” Swanson said. “How adults also are having almost more fun than the kids. We’re all using abstract shapes, so it feels accessible for anyone to come and just play. But then when all of the shapes and colors come together, it’s understandable.”

Freed designs community murals like a puzzle, he said, where the pieces come from the community members and his “invisible hand” guides them all into place. The idea came from a news article Freed saw roughly 25 years ago about a mural for an elementary school, where an artist designed the mural and had children help him paint it. The artist credited the mural to the students, much to Freed’s frustration. The mural reflected the artist’s work, he said, not the students. So Freed came up with a process that directly incorporates pieces of children’s artwork, which he then composes into a comprehensive piece.

“I tell the students, the kids to pick something, one thing out, and do a painting,” Freed said. “So if I got three city halls, I picked the best one, but I’d use a cloud from this one and a tree from that one. So everyone had a piece in it.”

After the composition is completed, Freed outlines a mural on wood in a “paint-by-numbers” fashion for the children to paint on. After the mural is fully painted, Freed goes back to clean up lines and brighten up colors, but maintains the integrity of the image. For instance: if a child paints a barn to lean to the left, Freed reinforces the image of the barn while leaving it crooked, since that was the artist’s choice.

“Basically it was like building a jigsaw puzzle backwards,” he said.

His design for Paradise City Arts differed from his normal process, however, since Paradise City Arts proposed a mural featuring the Connecticut River, City Hall and Lind.

“This was a more complicated artistic (image) that I had to reduce, which sounds easy and it wasn’t,” Freed said. “I basically just wanted to break everything down into simple shapes that anybody could paint in. But I also had to make it so if people didn’t do what they were supposed to do 100%, which is always what happens, it would still look good.”

Post, Swanson and Freed echoed the idea that everyone is an artist as long as they can pick up a paintbrush. Freed tells the story of a 10-year-old girl who spent hours Sunday night painting over the blue sky, her joy infectious. Visitors who poked their head into the tent over the weekend and heard about Lind’s story suddenly found that they’ve spent an hour hunched over the mural, bringing the image to life.

“The truth is, if you’re a human and you can handwrite a letter, you can make art,” Freed said. “You might not end up in a museum, but you can do something that gives you and the people around you joy.”

Emilee Klein can be reached at eklein@gazettenet.com.