Art class decorates Plains for the holidays
Skylar Bergstrom and Nathan McNulty work on a snowman for the entry window of the Bistro in downtown Plains last Thursday. (John Dowd/Clark Fork Valley Press)
Chris Jones painting a steaming cup of coffee on the front window of the Plains Bistro. (John Dowd/Clark Fork Valley Press)
Parker Flock, Maxwell Starika and Mason Elliott painting the windows of the Printery last Thursday morning. (John Dowd/Clark Fork Valley Press)
The residents of the town of Plains are always coming up with ways to celebrate with their community members, and last Thursday, as has been done for many years, the students of the art classes of Plains High School descended upon the town to do just that.
In groups of three to four the students split, bringing easy to remove paint mixed with a little dish soap, to decorate several of the town stores’ windows.
About 30 students in Kristen Cole’s art classes participated, getting as much of the day off as they needed to fulfill their festive task.
Before, Cole communicated with local businesses to find which ones would be willing to participate. Nearly 40 of the stores and businesses in Plains decided to allow the students to decorate their windows.
Each group chose which places they wanted to work on and searched the internet, and their minds, for ideas on what to paint.
Many groups picked ideas that related to the businesses that they were painting, as in the case of the Wild Roots Salon which now has a Santa with a blow-dryer in his hands, attempting to dry his beard before his annual delivery of presents.
The students traced a large mock-up, onto a big sheet of paper, of the design that they found and would tape that to the outside of the store window.
The students would then follow that pattern to scale up the art on the inside of the window. Then they would add color and personality to their paintings, giving the once regular town a personal holiday touch.