Silverton Arts February Newsletter

JAN 2024

HOSPITALITY, COMMUNITY, AND ART

Dear Friends —

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%!

Sample from Window Collage and Painting, taught by Glenda Goodrich

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 spaces in 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!

— Silverton Arts Association