National Fishing Day Artist Selected

AID THE SHADE: RESTORE REPARIAN FORESTS

Partnership blends art and environmental education for interdisciplinary learning

The winning design by Ali Palm will be featured on t-shirts commemorating the 2013 National Fishing & Boating Week. Ali is a fifth grade student at Methow Valley Elementary School. Five additional designs were chosen to be featured on posters which will be hung throughout the valley. The additional artwork features the following fifth grade students: Logan Hall, Walker Hall, Jonathan Ing-Moody, Novie McCabe, and Magnus Triese. The annual event is on June 8 at the Winthrop Fish Hatchery from 10am-2pm.

The blockprints were created through an interdisciplinary unit on Methow fish and fish habitat offered to fifth graders in conjunction with National Fishing and Boating Week. The theme: AID THE SHADE/RESTORE RIPARIAN FORESTS, reminds us of the relationship between healthy fish habitats and the riparian zone along rivers. In this interdisciplinary unit students first learned about fish and fish habitat in a workshop in their classrooms with local naturalists Michael Humling and Dave Thompkins. They then sketched images and learned how to carve blocks and print them with local teaching artists, Laura Gunnip and Emily Post. The block prints feature fish and habitat and reflect the student’s knowledge. There are many outstanding examples of block prints from the last 13 years. Many were featured in a free calendar; Living With the Methow River, produced by the Methow Resource Council and through a collaboration with Methow Arts Alliance.

This hands-on art residency was brought to students by Methow Arts’ Okanogan Region Arts Education Partnership. The partnership serves more than 5,500 students and 350 teachers across Okanogan County with arts programs in classrooms in the Omak, Okanogan, Brewster, Bridgeport, Pateros, and Methow School Districts, and in the Paschal Sherman Indian School.

The Fishing Day project is a collaboration between Arts WA, Friends of Northwest Hatcheries, Methow Arts Alliance, Methow Conservancy, Methow Salmon Recovery Foundation, Methow Valley Fly Fishers, Methow Valley School District, National Endowment for the Arts, Okanogan Conservation District, Trout Unlimited, the US. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Bureau Of Reclamation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Geological Survey, Upper Columbia Salmon Recovery Board, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Washington State Arts Commission, Washington State Parks, Wild Fish Conservancy, Winthrop Ace Hardware, and Yakama Nation.

(Above artwork and T-shirt winner by Ali Palm, and a finalist Walker Hall right, both 5th Grade Methow Valley Elementary Students)

Arts Partners: