PARADISE – The hallways of Paradise Elementary School will be filled once again, but this time it won’t be with students.  

The first annual Artists in Paradise event will span four days from July 30 – August 2 and will offer members of the community and beyond the opportunity to look at a variety of art. The exhibit will connect those in attendance to the artists exhibiting their work, offering an interactive feature to the event.

In all 18 exhibitors signed up to display their work, which varies from quilts and woodwork to paintings and fused glass. Karen Thorson, member of the Sanders County Arts Council, said the number of exhibitors will most likely drop to 15 – 16 artists due to a few conflicts.

After a year long planning process, the Visual Arts Committee of the Sanders County Arts Council is putting on the show in order to give the artists more exposure in the area.

The group started a little over a year ago as a platform to discuss the visual arts.

“It started with five or six of us chatting about the fact that in our county there wasn’t a venue or an opportunity for visual artists to get together and to support each other, inspire each other and really help each other,” Thorson said. “A part of what we do is literally encourage each other.”

The group now has 60 members.

Some of those members will be the ones participating in the exhibit itself. Not only will their works of art be on display, but Thorson said each artist would also have some type of project in the works.

“I told everyone to come with a sketch book or something so they can actually be doing some work, so it’s not just static,” Thorson said. “It’s an opportunity to see artists at work. Part of what the experience is to see all those artists there, to talk to them about what they do and to get a sense really of what their art is about.”

The event will span from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day.

The show is the first of three and will be held on an annual basis. The exhibit will be the very beginning stages of hopefully transforming the Paradise Elementary School into a community center, including a visitor’s center as well as a visual arts center.

“The other half of the picture is that the visual artists have thought that it would be important to have something in our county to have a public facility dedicated to the arts, so that brings up the Paradise Elementary School,” Thorson said. “So part of why we are doing this exhibit there is to get people who haven’t been in the school or haven’t been in the school for years to come see the art exhibit, which is important to see the artists and their work. It’s also important for them to see the school and kind of get a sense that the school is worth preserving now that it’s closed.”

The school board currently owns the building until June of 2016 so Thorson said this is an opportunity to see the possibilities begin to come to life.

The Paradise Elementary School Preservation Committee, another one Thorson is a part of, has recently applied for a Montana Department of Commerce grant to do a feasibility study. The study would see if the community center was viable and if it would be sustainable over time. The grant was recently submitted and the organization should know if they are awarded the grant in the next few months.

“It’s a bigger group, a group that’s interested in a veteran’s memorial, a group that’s interested in railroad history, a group that’s interested in preserving the history of the area,” Thorson explained.