More than five dozen high school students from around Southeast, along with their art teachers, will be busy painting, inking, printing, beading, knitting and more during Artfest, a four-day series of workshops in Wrangell this week.
Artfest will run Thursday through Sunday, April 24-27, at the high school, with an art show open to the public from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Sunday, said Tawney Crowley, the Wrangell School District’s art teacher.
The festival for Southeast students started in 1997 when Wrangell art teacher Kirk Garbisch helped organize the first event.
The first Artfest offered nine workshops. Now there are 12, each about three to four hours long, Crowley said.
“It’s like having a giant art studio,” she said of the event filling the school during spring break.
The workshops will be led by art teachers from the participating schools, plus some guests. The intent is to expose students to different kinds of art than what they see in their one-teacher communities, Crowley explained.
“You have to help further the arts,” she said.
Wrangell’s Sandy Churchill will teach a beginning beading workshop, and Wrangell artist Jaynee Fritzinger will lead a session on watercolor-ink fish art.
Other workshops will cover collages, glass mosaics, neurographic art (meditative art), clay scratch boards, moccasin making, bentwood boxes, landscape block painting, painting found objects and knitting.
Crowley, who started teaching art at the Wrangell schools in 2019 and who attended Artfest 2024 in Petersburg, will not lead any of the workshops. “I will be running around and making sure everyone has everything they need.”
The district’s activities director, Tammi Meissner, is helping Crowley run the event.
Students are expected in town from Craig, Haines, Juneau, Kake, Ketchikan, Klawock, Pelican, Petersburg, Sitka, Skagway and Yakutat.
Most will stay at the high school, while some out-of-town students arranged their own private housing, Crowley said.
The Alaska School Activities Association is paying much of the cost for the event, which was originally scheduled for Haines but had to find a new host city when that community found itself with a brand new art teacher this year.
Wrangell last hosted the event in 2015.
Reader Comments(0)