The Nugget Newspaper - News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon

Annie Painter. Photo provided

Sisters artist and educator Annie Painter will receive the 2003 Sunburst Award for her "exemplary commitment to young people, the arts, and education."

The award is sponsored by Young Audiences, a national organization that works to provide access to art for young people throughout the country.

The announcement was made by Sarah Avery Johnson, Executive Director of Young Audiences of Oregon.

In making the announcement, Johnson praised Painter's "expertise as an artist and an educator, and (her) legendary vision that makes change a reality in the way teachers teach and kids learn."

A former elementary school principal in the Gresham area, Painter now works as an art training consultant out of Sisters, where she has lived for the last several years.

Much of what she does involves training teachers in how to create and sustain art programs in their schools and classrooms.

Painter is a firm believer in developing creative processes as an integral part of childhood development and she has set out to educate teachers in how to use art to challenge thinking and create meaning in the lives of their students.

She says that leaving her role as a school principal was a conscious decision in order to pursue what she terms her "life's work."

Painter explained her primary purpose.

"My whole mission," she said, "is to help teachers deliver the joys and benefits of the arts to the kids in a way that complements all aspects of education."

Now, instead of spending her time at just one school, Painter is able to use her talents on a statewide scale to spread her vision of art. She believes art should be taught as creativity and expression rather than a rote by-the-numbers process.

She is currently completing a year-long contract with the Portland Public Schools and has trained 50 staff members and demonstrated her teaching techniques at 10 different sites.

"I want children to take chances with their art and not worry about getting it 'right,'" she said. "I want them to be inventors."

The benefits of such learning, she says, are not limited to the realm of art.

"As a principal, I have experienced profound benefits when the arts are well taught and sustained in a school setting -- in terms of social awareness, academics and test scores."

Strong art programs are also credited with helping retain some students who might otherwise drop out of school, in much the same manner that sports programs can successfully retain other students who might not have a strong interest in core academic subjects.

Her current work has been focused on some of the most challenged children such as wards of the court, pregnant and parenting teens and children with serious learning and emotional difficulties.

Young Audiences is an organization that definitely likes what Painter has to offer, and Johnson specifically recognized Painter's "expertise as artist, teacher and principal, passion for learning, and vision in making change a reality."

Johnson went on to say that Painter "has insp- ired countless schools and school districts to return the whole child to the heart of education."

Young Audiences was founded in 1958 and boasts national advisory board members such as Van Cliburn, Celeste Holme, Yo-Yo Ma, Wynton Marsalis, Itzhak Perlman and many others.

Painter's Sunburst Award will be presented at the annual Sunburst Breakfast at the Multnomah Athletic Club in Portland on June 12.

This is the second such award for Painter this year.

In February, she was presented with an "Artie" from the Central Oregon Arts Association, in recognition of her work with Art Station and the local Artists in the Schools Program, created for schools east of the Cascades.

In addition to training teachers in the arts, she is training artists to teach in the schools.

Not only has she conducted such work in the Portland area, but Arts Central in Bend has sponsored similar artist training programs at Art Station.

The goal of these programs is to educate willing artists in school culture to better enable them to share their gifts with the students.

Painter originally received her art education at the University of Oregon, where she specialized in soft sculpture and textile work.

After completion of her initial art studies, she worked as a professional artist and has works in several Portland art collections, including the Portland Art Museum's Smithsonian Collection.