Artists in Paradise featured during Paradise Center open house
Plains geologist Ted Seaman points outs features of the Glacial Lake Missoula exhibit to his mother Jeanie Lambert of Plains during the open house.
Dianne Zimmerman, right, of Thompson Falls shows her Steamboat Island Art alcohol inks offerings to Karen Olson of Plains during the Artists in Paradise exhibit July 21 during the opening of the Paradise Center. (Joe Sova/Clark Fork Valley Press)
{Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of articles about depictions of Paradise history and the future of the arts in the community.}
Every small community is rich in history, and the town of Paradise is certainly no exception.
A new chapter in the Paradise history book was written last Thursday through Saturday, July 19-21 with the fifth annual Artists in Paradise event in what was the gymnasium of the old Paradise Elementary School and now called the auditorium. The event featured about 11 of Sanders County’s talented artists, and artwork provided by students from the Summer Arts Camp.
To cap the three-day celebration, the Paradise Elementary School Preservation Committee hosted the opening of the Paradise Center during an open house Saturday, with excellent support from the Sanders County Arts Council. The center, in actuality, is the second floor of the 108-year-old solid-as-a-brick schoolhouse. It opened to students in 1910, and closed in 2013 — due to declining enrollment. Students in grades 1 to 12 were actually educated there for more than a century.
Showing off the Paradise Center
Committee member Karen Thorson led coordination of the three-day event, and her husband John was the guide for the many folks who came to see the center and attend the artist exhibit. Committee members were adept at explaining the ongoing progress with repurposing the former school. They include committee chairwoman Judy Stamm and Judy Stephens.
“We don’t have any other facility in the county dedicated to the arts,” Thorson said while in charge of a booth at Artists in Paradise. “We do performing arts and visual arts here. We teach classes here. So the Paradise Center is incredibly important to us.
“This is our fifth Artists in Paradise show. We had shows down here even when the (school) trustees owned the school.”
When the school closed in 2013, the trustees had not determined what it’s future would be. The preservation committee assumed administrative responsibility for the buildings and ground in 2016.
Gathering of artists
“We love it down here because we have the ability to have a lot of artists in the same space, and really welcome people from all over, from Missoula, from Kalispell, from Plains, Paradise, obviously,” Thorson said. “A benefit this year is that the school is opening now as the Paradise Center. People who might not ordinarily come to an art exhibit come to see the school because they’re interested in the railroad or Glacier Lake Missoula (see the related photo with this article), and they come here to visit.”
Thorson indicated the three-day artists exhibit and tours of the former school were very well attended.
“The artists all care for each other. We’re a very strong community and we love this event because we have a chance to come together and renew friendships,” Thorson added.
While exhibits and performances take place in the auditorium, the upper floor of the former classroom building is dedicated to the arts.
Sanders County Arts Council support
Thorson gave due credit to the Sanders County Arts Council for local support.
“The arts council is trying its best to address, in our county, performing arts, visual arts, education and soon will be doing literary arts as well,” she said. “One of the things we do is bring in six performances per year into Sanders County and these are performers who are doing national tours.”
Three of the performances are at the Paradise Center, and the other three are in Thompson Falls, at the Rex Theatre.
“In terms of visual arts, we do this show (Artists in Paradise) every year. We do Art on the Walls at the Clark Fork Valley Hospital,” Thorson said, explaining that’s visual arts that rotate quarterly. “We do something called Out and About, where our local businesses or our libraries and public spaces will feature one artist for a three-month period.”
Arts for youth
and adults
For the first time, a Summer Arts Camp for youngsters was held at the Paradise Center. There were dance classes in June and visual arts classes in July. Theatre classes are coming up in August.
“We do a series of classes for adults, six classes in the spring and six in the fall,” Thorson said. “They have basically been drawing, painting, animals, photography.”
The arts council recently received a Jerry Metcalf Foundation grant. The money will be used for a ceramics room, featuring kilns and potting wheels.
“We’ll start to do ceramics classes in the fall when we get everything in place,” Thorson said.
She wrapped her discussion of last week’s events with emphasis on the value of the Paradise Center, now and into the future.
“From the arts council’s perspective, this is vital to what we do,” Thorson said, “because we have no other single place where we can do this kind of thing.”