By Jo Garcia-Cobb
It’s a little known fact the 11th annual Silverton Fine Arts Festival actually began 39 years ago, when a small band of artists held the first arts festival in a small area of the Coolidge-McLaine Park on July 16, 1972.
With 140 exhibitors, including 24 members of the Junior Art Club, the festival then saw a hiatus until 2001, when the fine arts festival committee of the Silverton Arts Association (SAA) launched what has now become a successful decade as one of the region’s most respected and admired arts festivals.
From the first festival of ’72 to this year’s festival, the focus of SAA’s efforts has not changed — to create public awareness for a permanent center aimed at developing local artistic talent. As the SAA’s biggest fundraiser, the festival doesn’t only promise to be bigger and better this year, but will be more intent on addressing the problem of diminishing funding for the arts in the Silver Falls School District.
“Financial resources for the arts has been diminishing, particularly in the preschool through elementary grade levels,” said Moises Roizen, president, Silverton Art’s Association.
“The arts frequently get placed on the chopping board,” commented Eadie Anelli, music schoolteacher and co-chair of the festival. Over the years, Anelli has seen the struggle of the arts to share equal footing with reading, writing, arithmetic and PE. “Not only are the arts essential in the life of every student. Some students also find that it is in the arts that they can thrive and excel. Not everyone is cut out to be an engineer, a scientist or an athlete,” added Anelli.
With funds raised from the festival, the association has been able to offer workshops, summer camps, after-school classes and new programs to bring art into the schools.
Last year, SAA and Silverton’s public schools launched the Art Partnership Program, which aims to bring quality art education to the elementary schools in the Silver Falls School District. The program has begun to offer direct classroom instruction with the generous assistance of volunteers. SAA plans to hire certified teachers, local artists, and community member/parent volunteers for the program in the near future.
SAA tested the waters last year at a few public schools by teaching art lessons based on the art of Michelangelo and on pointillism. “Students , for instance, had a taste of what it was like to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel by doing work on paper taped on the underside of tables,” related SAA member artist Ann Altman.
Such lessons, Altman said, drive home the importance of art as a problem-solving skill. It’s a different way of thinking that opens other areas of the mind.”
Both students, numbering more than 2,000 in the Silver Falls School District, and their teachers are expected to benefit from the Art Partnership Program, as teachers’ professional development is enhanced in the skill of embedding the arts in their existing curriculum and students experience the positive effects of art education.
The Silverton Fine Arts Festival is SAA’s way of bringing art, not only to the schools, but to the larger community as well. There will be more than 90 artists’ booths, featuring the works of local and visiting artists.
As Laura Roderick, a Silverton Fine Arts Festival fan from Canby, writes on the festival’s Facebook page: “This festival is a not-to-be-missed’ summer event. So much creativity! So much beauty! And great music performed live as well. I love it!”
