CELEBRATING OUR TEACHERS

This month we’re highlighting a few of our amazing Silverton Arts Association teachers! But before we do, let’s touch base on what’s happening at the Art Center!

• Senior center groups continue to make use of our space as their building is repaired.

• Classes and workshops are ongoing through the winter — see below for details

• New board members are coming on to serve our mission (hooray!)

• Grant applications are going out to our regional partners to help us make stronger programs, support staff, and help with our continued renewal of the Art Center property.

• Committees have stepped up to help pilot our Summer Art Camp and our beloved school art gallery shows in April and May!

Now, on to our teachers:

As you may know, we send art instructors out into the Silver Falls School District every school year to provide arts education. We’re proud to make high quality art classes available to our district schools. This isn’t just a vital part of our mission — for many kids in our public schools, it’s the only arts instruction they receive! 

Our teachers work with school staff to fit one-hour art sessions into their normal classroom schedule. In 2021-2022, we served over 900 students! We’re incredibly grateful for the efforts of our teachers, Angela McGraw and John Friedrick, who manage art supplies and lesson plans and travel to schools like Scotts Mills, Community Roots, Victor Point, and others.

ABOUT OUR TEACHERS

Angela McGraw

Angela McGraw brings a wealth of experience in arts education and a passion to incorporate art history into her education sessions - from Picasso to children's author and illustrator, Eric Carle!

Previous to moving to Silverton, Angela was a full time elementary school teacher. After working as an art teacher at our local Evergreen Elementary, she took time off to raise her children, then joined the Silverton Arts Association team to bring art experiences to the students throughout the district.

Kids in her classes produce wonderful art creations with her guidance and encouragement. Many of these are part of the district’s spring art show every year, and also adorn hallways and classrooms throughout the district.

"My goal is to give every student the opportunity to create something they are proud of.  Maybe even something they were surprised to be able to produce!  I consider it my job to help them discover their talent and encourage them to explore visual art in the future!"

John Friedrick

John’s art practice focuses on inner and outer landscapes, contemplative spirituality, our relationship and responsibility to the earth, and the importance of accessibility in both spirituality and art. He relies on observation, reflection, and humor in exploring these topics through plein air paintings and drawings, journal comics, songs, and whatever other medium he happens to be exploring at the moment.

John has helped organize community art events in Silverton since 2012 and currently volunteers as an artist in residence at the Borland Community Art Space with the Silverton Art Association. He performs folk songs as Friendmaker.

Funding for this program is provided by the Mary Duby Heindrich Trust through Oregon Community Foundation.

More Arts Opportunities

Looking for art classes for yourself, or maybe the creative kid in your life? Check our current offerings at the Art Center! These include Mixed Media Collage, Abstracted Landscape in Acrylic, and more. For kids, we have Drawing with Hollie and a multi-day Spring Break Art Camp — and watch this space for news about Summer Art Camp signups!

And don’t forget that Arts Association members receive a 15% discount on all programming. Sign up here.

Thanks for your participation in the life of our creative community — we look forward to seeing you at the Silverton Art Center.

HOSPITALITY, COMMUNITY, AND ART

Happy February! There’s so much to talk about.

This season, the Arts Association was in the fortunate position to serve our friends at the Silverton Senior Center who were displaced after significant damage to their building from a burst water pipe. A knitting group has set up shop in our Community Arts Space during open hours on Wednesdays (10AM-1PM), and a group of painters have merged with our Thursday Painters open studio. We’re so pleased to see these new faces at the Art Center, and wish the Senior Center well as it navigates repairs.

We also received a nice feature in Our Town, the local paper, detailing our expanding emphasis on programming. As we head into February and March, our Classes and Workshops include Window Collage and Painting, Mindful Art Making, Introduction to Watercolor (an Art for All subsidized class!) and Beginning Zentangle. Another subsidized workshop, Playful Pet Portraits, is available in sessions for both adults and youth. Specifically on the youth side, we have a five session drawing class for kids ages 6-9 starting February 17th, as well as three sessions of Spring Break Art Camp (March 27, 28, and 29)! All our classes and workshops are priced affordably, but if cost is an issue for your family, please email us at info@silvertonarts.org — we may be able to provide scholarships in select cases!

Visit our Classes page to sign up for this fantastic arts programming — and if you’re a member, remember to use your code to save 15%!

Arts Festival on Pause for 2024

Another significant point of news is that the Silverton Arts Festival is on pause for 2024. This was a difficult decision, but our board ultimately decided that we must focus energy this year on our many amazing community programs — affordable arts education, school district arts programming support (964 students served last year!), our resident artist-led Community Arts Space, our new film festival, and general arts advocacy in our rural community. To adhere to this year-round mission — to nurture the arts in and around Silverton — we must prioritize these essentials, and apply our volunteer energy in a sustainable way.

We understand that this pause will be disappointing for many artists who are long-time exhibitors. Know that we're actively working on plans for 2025, and have engaged another local festival, Homer Davenport Days, to expand their spacesin Coolidge McClaine Park and across Silver Creek. Our hope is that many Arts Festival exhibitors will still have an opportunity to participate in a Silverton-area summer event, and we’re grateful for the Homer team’s support! To apply for space at Homer Days, please visit https://www.homerdavenport.com/homer-days

And while the Arts Festival is on pause this year, we’re very excited to share that planning meetings have begun for a robust children’s Summer Art Camp.There’s a terrific group of teachers involved, significant funding support is in place, and our leaders are actively investing their time to craft this into something truly special. Our goal is to make the Summer Art Camp a highly accessible program for our rural families with top-notch instruction and creative content. “Art for All” is a label we’ve created for highly affordable arts programming, greatly subsidized through partner support. We plan to make the Summer Art Camp such an offering, so that we can serve as many creative kiddos as possible. Watch for more details on this program very soon!

Finally, please know that your involvement with the Arts Association is a huge part of keeping these programs running strong. Without our members, we’d have no art to hang in our community space, no open studios to welcome others into our art practices, and no new leaders bringing vision for the future. Signing up as a member not only provides you opportunities to hang work in our Community Arts Space, receive discounts on programming, and freely attend open studio sessions — it makes us a stronger organization. A source of deep, creative nourishment in a fast-changing world. Please come share in our community,and sign up or renew your membership today at https://www.silvertonarts.org/membership

See you soon at the Art Center!

A NEW YEAR & THE FUTURE OF THE SILVERTON ARTS FESTIVAL

Happy New Year! We hope it’s been a good holiday season for you. 2023 was certainly a big year for Silverton Arts. Here’s a review of just a few highlights:

• Our public school program served over 900 students. 

• Programming at the Art Center now includes grant-subsidized classes and workshops (Art for All!).

• We offered many diverse classes and workshops including Zentangle Drawing, Comics, Acrylic Painting, Creature Design, and Stained Glass.

• We ran the first annual Silver Falls Film Fest to kick off our Arts Festival in August.

• Visitors continue to enjoy free access to art supplies and a comfortable community arts space throughout the year at the Art Center, hosted through our Resident Artist program (come visit us during open hours, 10am-1pm, Wed-Sun!).

• This is all partly made possible by a new roof and HVAC system we successfully funded through local and regional support!

Students at work in our recent Winter Art Camp

Volunteers assist with moving Tonya Smithburg’s mural from the Art Center (now on permanent display outside the Silver Falls Public Libray).

What’s Next?

In 2024, we’ll continue to improve the Art Center — restoring its exterior through a combination of grant funding and community effort. We’ll offer more quality programming like our sold-out Winter Art Exploration series. We’re actively developing a robust summer art camp for youth, and plan many more quality workshops and classes for adults, too. It’s good stuff. 

These offerings are essential to our ongoing mission to promote, encourage, and exhibit the arts in Silverton!

This brings us to the Arts Festival — a beloved event that requires a significant outlay of man hours throughout the year (around 1,500). Because we are a volunteer-run organization, that’s more than our small board of six can juggle in 2024 while prioritizing our renewed programming and Art Center repairs.

We’re exploring several paths forward, but one thing is certain: To continue offering the Arts Festival, we need additional volunteers for a dedicated Festival Committee, and a paid event manager. If you’re a member of our community who values the Arts Festival and wants to help keep it going, please get in touch!

Visitors gather for the first annual Silver Falls Film Festival — kicking off the Silverton Arts Festival — August 2023.

GIVING BACK

Last month was about expressing gratitude for the good things happening at the Art Center. Well, there was so much good news that we had to save some for this month!

But first, remember to come celebrate with us at the Silverton Arts Association’s annual holiday party, this Saturday, December 2nd, 6PM at the Silverton Art Center! There’ll be refreshments, good cheer, and well-deserved recognition for the community members who pour their love and energy into the Arts Association.

SUBSIDIZED CLASSES — Art for All

We’re very pleased to share an exciting development in our arts programming.

Each school year, Silverton Arts sends teachers into district schools that have minimal to no arts education available for their K-8 students. In 2021-2022, with only one (amazing) teacher, Angela McGraw, we served over 900 public school students with a budget of only $4,000. We knew there was potential to serve twice that number with additional resources, but we simply didn’t have them. So — we applied for more grants and brought on an additional teacher, John Friedrick. This fall, thanks to a programming grant written by SAA board member Kate Durrant, we received an additional $16,000 from Lynn’s Smile Fund of Oregon Community Foundation!

With these funds, we can increase the impact of our school program and provide more affordable arts education at our Art Center throughout the year! Subsidized classes are already scheduled and available for purchase, including a Youth Arts Exploration Workshop (ages 7-13) with sessions available January 3rd, 4th, and 5th. Each youth workshop is 5 hours and includes all art materials for only $30 a session.

Find out more on our website’s programming page!

A New and Improved Website

Speaking of websites, last month we launched a new one! It’s not only beautiful, but much more functional than before.

Memberships are easier to manage: to renew or reinstate, simply visit our membership page and select your desired tier. Payments can now be made via credit card with no PayPal account required — hooray! The same applies for classes and workshops. It’s all much simpler and efficient.

Note that memberships through our new website platform will auto-renew annually. You are or course free to cancel at any time.

Time to renew your membership at Silverton Arts? Start here.

Happy Holidays

Thank you for your involvement in our arts community! We hope to see many of you at the holiday party — Anne Pinkowski (programming director) and Kate Durrant (board member) have done a lovely job preparing the space — and the delicious treats — so it’s definitely not one to miss.

We wish you a warm and restorative holiday season!

THANKSGIVING

As many of you know, our Art Center was very much in need of a new roof and HVAC system — significant expenses for us, even with some generous discounts we received from local contractors. We ran a campaign this summer around the festival to Raise the Roof, and thankfully, between donations around the Film and Arts festivals, and a capital improvement grant we received from Ford Family Foundation, we raised nearly $20,000 towards those building improvements. The new roof is on, and the HVAC has been replaced with a more modern, efficient system. This spring, we’ll target the building’s siding and paint.

There’s more to be done, but we’ve made huge progress!

PROGRAMMING

This fall we have a rich array of workshops and classes on offer, including a winter art camp for youth in late December. All these and more are available for signups now on our new website — so find what interests you and help us spread the word about the exciting programming that’s happening at the Art Center.

Members receive a 15% discount with their special code (if you don’t have yours yet, it’s coming in another email directly following this one)!

Kinsugi bowl examples

PARTY TIME

Mark your calendars for our Holiday Party, Saturday December 2nd, at 6PM! We have lots to celebrate, so this year we’re including not only members, but our volunteers, sponsors, community partners, and teachers. As they say, it takes a village, and our village really put in extra this year.

Because we’re a member-based nonprofit, this is also a chance to make your voice heard — namely by voting on incoming board leaders — but also by sharing your perspective and passion. We want to know you better, and hear your ideas on how we can make this community thrive, together.

We look forward to seeing you at the party: Saturday December 2nd, 6PM — 303 Coolidge St., Silverton OR 97381 in the Borland Community Arts Space.

NEW WEBSITE

Our new website is now live with easier-than-ever ways to purchase classes, memberships, and connect with Silverton’s creative community!

We’ll update this news section every month with new opportunities, so check back often, or sign up for our newsletter.

Silverton attends the 2023 K-8 School Art Show