Frontier Art Center will celebrate its 7th Anniversary on Saturday, Oct. 25 from 1 to 4 p.m., with a party, an art auction, and lots of refreshments provided by Treva from the Elks Lodge. Besides our anniversary, we will be celebrating our late patron, Amos Burk, who had so much to do with the creation of Frontier Art Center.

Amos’s gifts of equipment formed the beginning of our pottery studio, and his gift of encouragement helped many of us begin to be ceramic artists. The art center, which started with pottery and painting, now also offers spinning and weaving classes, as well as workshops in basketry and calligraphy. 

Other benefactors, such as Linda Peterson, Linda Pelroy, Diane Dodge, and Shana Withee have gifted the art center with looms and spinning wheels. Treasure Valley Community College donated potter’s wheels and other equipment. Many in our community have given us fiber, which we then are able to give to those who choose to create socks or hats or whatever they are inspired to make. 

Along with our usual Family Art days and painting evenings for adults, we just started a series we call Teen Art (a free monthly event, for teens only), and we have spent many hours with Kids Club kids, students from Silvies River Charter School, and folks from Symmetry Care, all of them learning something about working with clay, or paint, or fiber. 

Two or three times a year we join in community festivities, like the Bird Festival or Christmas Jamboree, and provide a free art experience such as painting ceramic ornaments that we make in advance for participants to paint. 

It is our hope that all who come to exercise their creativity at Frontier Art Center will find a way to continue honing their skills at whatever art they choose. And an added benefit would be when those developing artists bring their friends in, perhaps during one of our Friday Open Studio times. 

The Frontier Art Center is a program of the 501(c)3 Community Support Foundation of Harney County (CSFHC). Your art auction purchases during our party on the 25th will support the art center. In addition, the website frontierartcenter.com has two “donation” buttons; one is to for general operational support and one specifically to donate in honor of Amos Burk, to continue his legacy of providing free art experiences. We hope you will take advantage of these opportunities, any time of year. Besides seeing photos of our offerings and past events on the website, you can always see what’s coming up by going to our Facebook.com/BurnsOR page.

Please join us in the afternoon on Oct. 25 to celebrate our seven years of success, and see what all our excitement is about. Help us happily begin our eighth year.