Students display art at the Ranch

The Gallery at Black Butte Ranch will host the artwork of Sisters Middle School students through the month of December. Kit Stafford's seventh- and eighth-grade art students were asked to provide a "Magic of the Holidays"-themed exhibit for viewing at the Ranch through the holiday season.

"Every year I choose a theme for Christmas, and we decorate around that theme at the Gallery," said gallery coordinator Katie Williams. "And I try to find artwork that represents that theme. When I started thinking about artwork I thought that I would like the children's vision of what the magic of the holidays is, and the resulting pieces that we've seen are really spectacular and I'm so excited that the artwork they've come up with is so unique and creative."

Stafford, who has been at Sisters Middle School for nine years, teaches two classes. One is the Americana Project class, funded by donations from the Sisters Folk Festival's My Own Two Hands. In this class the students learn to play guitar, write songs, but also do quilting, painting, pottery, baking, and as Stafford said, "whatever else strikes our fancy."

Stafford continued, "When we approached the kids about contributing to the gallery, they needed a format to see what the possibilities were, and then it turned out they needed some structure to it, and that's how the Americana pieces came out. In the other class we decided to do some silhouettes, and that's how they came up with the images of wintertime. And it's not always a happy time, it's not always the magic or delights of the holiday so they expressed what their hopes were as much as anything else."

The second class, an arts discovery program for underserved students, gets some of it's funding from the Black Butte Ranch Art Guild. It is an exploratory class where the students are exposed to the art of self-expression. It also guides the students to be leaders. Visiting artists are brought in whenever possible to provide the students with real-world examples of what is possible in the world of art.

Maddie Abbajay, a 13-year-old eighth-grade student, commented, "I made a picture with fabric, and we fused it on with an iron and I made a river with a tree and fishes. I think it's a really cool idea to have our work displayed, and the rest of the class thought it would be really cool to have it displayed, too."

Fourteen-year-old Ryan Cook said, "I made a Christmas tree for my project, and I think it's pretty cool that we get to have our art out at Black Butte."

"Miss Stafford said we were going to do a project and that it would go out at Black Butte," Hayden Parsons, 14, said. "My project was made out of fabric and ironed on. I think it's real sweet that we get to have our work out at the Ranch so people get to see my beautiful artwork."

"The great thing about these kids, and in particular the arts discovery class, is that they wanted to do this for Katie," Stafford added. "She had come in to talk to the kids and they said they really didn't know what to do, but they didn't want to let her down, and I think that is so indicative of these kids that they are always so generous, and sometimes it's the children with the least who are the most generous, they really understand that."