>La Grande Observer | Union and Wallowa Counties' News Leader

Art students Deborah Hoffnagle, left, and Olivia Slippy in the Loso Hall print lab. (The Observer/JEFF PETERSEN).

Jeff Petersen

Staff Writer

very kid is a "helicopter" pilot.

At least every kid who spent time around a maple tree.

Although she's grown up now, Olivia Slippy is no exception. One fall day the Eastern Oregon University senior art major from La Grande and the other students in the Art 340 Intaglio class at EOU got a chance to relive their childhoods. They met with Brian Kelly and Bill Harman of Trees East to take a tree walk around campus.

It was then that Slippy rediscovered the magic of the maple tree "helicopters."

"A friend standing next to me ... commented on how she had always loved to play with ‘helicopters' as a kid," Slippy recalls. "I was instantly drawn back to my own childhood with thoughts of picking maple tree seeds off the ground, throwing them into the air and watching them spin silently to the ground again."

Classmate Deborah Hoffnagle, meanwhile, took her inspiration from farther away. Of her two prints donated to the art auction, one is inspired by deciduous trees, the other of a green, lush rain forest in Costa Rica.

"Ever since I was a child I have loved the outdoors," the senior art major from La Grande says. "My tree prints reflect my reverence for nature."

She says people are often so busy in the modern rush-rush world that they fail to observe their surroundings closely.

"I want to entice people to look at the beautiful details of nature," she says — the shape, color, texture and patterns.

Slippy and Hoffnagle's class had selected Trees East from a number of non-profit organizations to work with on a Cooperative Print Exchange Project.

According to Assistant Professor Kathelene Galloway, the project started with students taking digital images and notes, and making sketches.

Then "they brought their experience back to the studio where they continued to research trees, and explore their personal relationship to them," Galloway recalls. "Over the term the class developed designs and made an edition of prints to share with one another — and with Trees East."

Some of those designs — along with works of other artists including willow baskets, pottery and much more — will be part of Arts for Trees Saturday.

It's an auction for art inspired by trees, and in support of urban forestry.

The intaglio process used by the EOU class is complex. First, artists use or combine handwork with new technologies to image their plates. Then they acid-etch the lines and textures to hold ink.

"Each print is inked individually," Galloway says. "Running an edition takes many thoughtful hours."

The etched copper plate can produce around 100 prints, Galloway says.

"For this edition the artists kept the editions relatively small," she says. They "printed enough that they could each have one from all the Trees East is a non-profit organization that was formed in 2004.

The mission of Trees East is to enhance the urban forest and landscapes of Eastern Oregon.

Trees East will support planting and landscape projects for the public benefit and will also promote public education about trees and the landscape. Initially, this will be accomplished by providing financial support to the Urban Forestry Program for the City of La Grande.

Future programs may help support urban forestry activities in other Eastern Oregon communities.

In La Grande, the Urban Forestry Program has planted more than 1,000 new trees in the community during the past eight years.

It has helped people care for trees by providing assistance and education about selecting, planting and pruning trees.

La Grande's urban forest has grown stronger, healthier and more beautiful as a result.

La Grande is proud to be a Tree City USA and has won awards at the state and national levels. Trees East was formed in an effort to provide a funding source for the Urban Forestry Program and to allow the successes of the program potentially to expand regionally.

Trees provide aesthetic, environmental and economic benefits to a community. Trees East is working to ensure that our urban forest will continue to provide these benefits for the future of our community.

Trees East is registered as a public benefit non-profit corporation with the Oregon Secretary of State and Department of Justice.

Application for tax-exempt (501 3) status was filed with the Internal Revenue Service in November 2004.