Students Exhibit Their Artwork In Bigfork

Students from the Bigfork School will have their annual art show in May. The gallery is being set-up with one of the most enjoyable shows of the year. The show is always one of the most colorful and creative of the season and will provide visitors an appreciation of the special creativity young artists display. The Bigfork School Student Show will be held May 3rd through May 26th with a public reception on May 22nd. The gallery is open Thursday through Saturday from 10AM to 2PM. Admission is free.

Right now the exhibit is being set-up by gallery volunteers and the photos here provide a peek at what is promising to be a great start to the exhibition season.

During the school year, students learn the artistic skills necessary for creating their works from the use of a camera, paintbrush or sculpting media. Along with the mechanical skills, they are taught the elements of composition shapes, lines, colors, textures, and lighting. Combining these technical skills into something meaningful for each artist makes for wonderful art regardless of age. Getting all this into the young minds and having it come out the way they visualize it, is the challenge of the teacher. At Bigfork School, that teacher is Roberta Steinhart. She teaches the students about “finding their voice in art and using art as a vehicle of communication”. All young minds have something important to say and the visual arts can reflect their emerging personalities.

Each year there are special opportunities for art education at the school. This year Native Artist Gordon Coons held classes for the students using his special techniques. The results were amazing and are covered in an earlier blog here. Some of that art will be in the show.

Of course the learning process for art never ends. And this summer there will be an opportunity for the students to work with another medium…large puppets. At the end of May, Master Puppeteer, Teresa Linnehan, will teach a puppet-making residency at the school, and some of those puppets will appear in the Bigfork Wilderness Day parade, June 9th. From June 21st-24th, The Edge Center will present “The Edge of the Wilderness Almanac. Look for more on that later.