By Gary Demuth

Salina Journal

Like Indiana Jones, Kathryn Boyle doesn't like snakes.

"I'll look at them if they're in a cage or behind glass, but honestly, I don't like them at all," said Kathryn, 14, a freshman at Salina Central High School.

Yet Kathryn's distaste for snakes didn't prevent her from making one of her own by sticking her arm and hand in plaster.

Kathryn and other middle and high school age students were participating in a workshop conducted by Lawrence-based sculptor Matthew Burke at the Salina Art Center, 242 S. Santa Fe. It was the first of several prefestival activities designed to kick off this year's Smoky Hill River Festival, which is Thursday through Sunday at Oakdale Park.

During the weeklong workshop, Burke showed the students how to make plaster casts of their arms and hands and turn them into snakes of their own imaginative design.

"The important thing I teach is that you can make things out of whatever you find," said Burke, who also teaches sculpture classes at the University of Kansas.

After covering their arms in plaster and taking off the casts, the students thickened the body of the "snake" with three to four layers of plaster gauze dipped in water. When the plaster dried, they were instructed to paint their creations in colorful patterns.

Joe McKenna, 13, intended to paint his snake green with orange stripes, once he finished drying the plaster with the help of a hand-held hair dryer.

"If you don't pay attention, you'll mess up," said Joe, an eighth grader at Lakewood Middle School.

The individual snakes are just a prelude to Burke's bigger project, one he is making for the Smoky Hill River Festival. In what he called "The Massasauga Project," Burke is designing and building a 5-foot high, 77-foot long woven wood snake, intended to represent the Massasauga river snake, a reptile native to the Salina area.

"It's actually the smallest of rattlesnakes," he said. "There's an eastern and western version, and we have the western version, which is native to Salina."

The wooden snake is created by weaving long strips of native hardwood into several rounded sections of five to six feet each. The multiple sections will be transported to an area north of the Kenwood Park bridge, where they will be connected and curved in "S" shaped patterns and then painted during the festival.

When set, the entire snake sculpture should be 20 to 30 feet long, Burke said.

"The nice thing is, it will be a three-dimensional form that weaves like the river does," Burke said.

After the festival is finished, Burke will go back to Lawrence for two weeks. He'll return to Salina on July 7 to be the Salina Art Center's summer 2008 artist in residence through the end of July.

The festival, he said, will be a good way to introduce himself to the Salina people.

"This is something you can bring the community around," he said.

More prefestival events

Whether it's art, music, dance or puppetry, prefestival events are an important way to provide the community with a preview of the Smoky Hill River Festival, said Karla Prickett, prefestival event coordinator with the Salina Arts and Humanities Commission, sponsors of the annual festival.

"It gives you a taste of what's going to happen that weekend," she said.

Other prefestival events include:

n Eulenspiegel Puppet Theatre Puppetry Workshop -- Students in the Sunset Elementary School summer lunch program will make puppets, beginning at 10 a.m. Wednesday and Thursday at Sunset School. They'll also rehearse a puppet show and perform it at 1 p.m. Friday and noon Saturday at the Children's Stage at the Smoky Hill River Festival.

n Madonnara Chalk Art/Street Painting -- Kansas City artist Joan Finn will demonstrate the 16th century Italian art form of chalk art, based on chalk renderings of the Madonna by Madonnari artistans who practiced their art near churches and public squares. Finn will be at work beginning at 10 a.m. Thursday in front of Martinelli's Little Italy restaurant, Santa Fe and Walnut streets.

"She'll also be doing chalk work in the park during the festival," Prickett said. The work will be north of the Children's Stage.

n "Your Car as Canvas" -- An ordinary car will be transformed into an art car by Minneapolis, Minn., artists Jan Elftmann and Kat Corrigan, who will team with artist Erika Nelson of Lucas and local art students. The artists will embellish the car by attaching multiple objects with silicon adhesive or screws. A second vehicle, a van provided by OCCK of Salina, will be transformed through paint into an art car to introduce Salina's upcoming "Go Green" bus system.

Both cars will be decorated beginning at 10 a.m. Thursday at Campbell Plaza in downtown Salina. The process will be continued at the festival Friday through Sunday west of the craft demonstration area at Oakdale Park.

n Reporter Gary Demuth can be reached at 822-1405 or by e-mail at gdemuth@salina.com.

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