Artistic aspirations

HAYDEN - Purple origami flowers were strewn across Ethan Schwegel's desk as he concentrated on threading a string through several colorful paper cranes.

"This is going to be a very long thing of cranes," he said, sizing up the string while he gave it an end-to-end stretch.

Ethan, 12, of Coeur d'Alene, is one of 127 youths - incoming second-graders to outgoing eighth-graders - whose imaginations soared this week during the 34th annual ArtShop, which was held at Hayden Meadows Elementary School.

"I've known cranes for a while - I've been doing it since I was 5, I think," Ethan said Thursday afternoon. "I like the fact that you can turn paper into art by just doing a bunch of folding. In school, the nice thing is I'm good enough that I can do it with sticky notes."

Instructor Kelsey Cordes-Snyder has taught origami to ArtShop youngsters for three years.

"I really like origami because a lot of people can do it and kids really like it; they like using their hands," she said. "A lot of it is about repetition and patience, but they're overall pretty good with it. I think it's pretty cool because you can even use a gum wrapper to do it, so this is something they can do almost anywhere."

Origami was just one of the many visual and performing arts classes available to this year's ArtShop students. They created mosaics, played with digital photographs, clowned around with a professional clown, learned about cartooning from an editorial cartoonist, explored ancient and modern drumming rhythms, practiced magic tricks and much more.

ArtShop, which is sponsored by the Citizens Council for the Arts in partnership with Coeur d'Alene School District 271, usually begins the Monday before Art on the Green and ends that Friday, culminating with performances the students have been working on all week.

"I just like being creative sometimes," said Hannah Garey, 10, of Coeur d'Alene, who has participated in two ArtShops. "I just think it's fun to create stuff and learn stuff."

Brandon Davidson, 10, of Post Falls, explained the "Mud Works!" class while he carefully painted a clay trinket box he made.

"Basically what we do is we create things like people, boxes, fish, and we've created a lot more," he said. "You put it in a kiln, you fire it, then they bring it back and we paint it. You get clay and you shape it yourself."

He said ArtShop is as social as it is creative.

"I just enjoy making friends here," he said.

Renee Kauffman, who serves as the artist and facility director, has been involved with ArtShop for 18 years. She said a change does happen from the first day students come to ArtShop to the day they leave.

"A lot of them will come in with apprehensions about the art form that they're going to be pursuing and by the end of the week they have gained a resiliency because they have become excited about performing on stage," she said. "The audience is always engaged, but a majority of our audience is our parents, because of the time of day."

She said ArtShop students gain confidence when they learn a new skill and perform it for the public.

"They learn that if they try something new and work hard at practicing what they're learning, then they can succeed in their endeavors," she said.

ArtShop students will be wowing audiences with dance routines, yo-yo tricks, melodious marimbas, juggling and more from noon-3 p.m. today on the main (north) stage on the North Idaho College during Art on the Green.

Info: www.artonthegreencda.com/artshop