Wild Crafts Convey Global Theme Art Studio To Stage Series Of Workshops To Prepare For Procession Of The Species On Earth Day
The lion turned into an alligator.
The girl became a meadowlark, yellow breast stretching from her forehead to her chest.
An African bat flew from another child’s blond head.
Species. All manners, makes and models.
Cardboard creatures in a zoo of colors, bolstered with bits of foam, pieces of string and unending imagination.
This was a procession in the making, actually, a prelude to Spokane’s 30th anniversary Earth Day celebration. And a down-to-earth celebration of the talents of those imaginative enough to huddle on the floor of a Spokane warehouse-turned-studio Saturday and craft masks and costumes from the detritus of the discard pile.
By midafternoon a few dozen people were donning their outfits and marching around the Columbus Street building to the beat of the Eastern Washington University Percussion Ensemble.
“It’s not a parade,” warned Bernadine Van Thiel, a writer, poet and educator who hatched the local species cavalcade. “It’s a procession.”
“A parade is for entertainment. A procession is for participating, for getting together to celebrate the mysteries and wonders of the natural world.”
Van Thiel heard about a similar procession in Portland last year and was so excited by the idea she went to watch. She brought the idea home because Van Thiel wants to balance negative environmental news - species vanishing, habitat shrinking, global warming - that leaves people without hope.
“This is totally different,” Van Thiel said. “This is to focus on what’s here.”
She enlisted Chad Mitchell, former warbler with the Chad Mitchell Trio, and other members of a local group called “Creating the Future.”
Seattle artist Darwin Nordin, who specializes in creatures, helped aspiring artisans of all ages Saturday, showing 11-year-old Lauryn Harvey how to coax a meadowlark mask out of corrugated cardboard and Kristina Ries how to go batty from what was once a Pentium III box.
Kathleen Waldron-Soler and her husband, Patricio Soler, set out to make a lion. Evolution dictated that the creature emerge as an alligator.
“It’s a process artists go through, too,” Soler explained as he welded the gator’s head together with a glue gun. “Things don’t always go according to plan. It’s kind of that human way of adaptation.”
The building used for Saturday’s workshop, at 1007 N. Columbus, is becoming the Procession of the Species Art Studio. After several more free workshops here, a pride of lions, cheetahs, quail and bear will gather at Riverfront Park on April 22 for an Earth Day celebration.
Kids be aware, mothers beware: This includes a drum-making workshop and the opportunity to make your own rhythm at the Earth Day event.
This sidebar appeared with the story:
WORKSHOPS
Procession props
Several additional workshops will be held for people who want to create a costume or build a drum and join in the Procession of the Species Celebration at Riverfront Park on April 22, the 30th anniversary of Earth Day. All workshops are held at the Procession of Species Art Studio, 1007 N. Columbus Street. They include:
Costume and drumming workshops each Thursday through April 22 from 6-9 p.m.
Flying Fish & Fowl sculpture workshop, Saturday, 10 a.m. to noon.
Life Masks workshop, March 26, 1-4 p.m. and April 9 and 16, 2-4 p.m.
Drum-making workshop, April 16, 7-9 p.m.
Drum-playing workshop, April 21, 7-9 p.m.