Students ‘think like a prairie’ with hands-on art experience

Artist Austen Camille [left] along with North Valley CTE students Aaron Linner, Kale Tanke, and James Elliott collecting prairie soils they later rendered into paint pigments during the Thinking Like a Prairie workshops. Photo provided by Josh Anderson.

Artist Austen Camille [left] along with North Valley CTE students Aaron Linner, Kale Tanke, and James Elliott collecting prairie soils they later rendered into paint pigments during the Thinking Like a Prairie workshops. Photo provided by Josh Anderson.

North Valley CTE students Isidoro Martinez (left) and Aaron Linner paint with soil pigments on prairie paper as part of the Thinking Like a Prairie workshops. Photo provided by Josh Anderson.

North Valley CTE students Isidoro Martinez (left) and Aaron Linner paint with soil pigments on prairie paper as part of the Thinking Like a Prairie workshops. Photo provided by Josh Anderson.

Students Julissa Garcia and Daphneiris Almonte from the North Valley CTE program paint on prairie paper with pigments made from local soils as part of the Thinking Like a Prairie workshops. Photo Josh Anderson.

Students Julissa Garcia and Daphneiris Almonte from the North Valley CTE program paint on prairie paper with pigments made from local soils as part of the Thinking Like a Prairie workshops. Photo Josh Anderson.

North Valley CTE students Julissa Garcia (brown shirt), Daphneiris Almonte, and Aaron Linner press prairie plants into clay plates as part of the Thinking Like a Prairie workshops. Plates will be fired and glazed and used at a potluck as part of the program next Spring. Photo Josh Anderson.

North Valley CTE students Julissa Garcia (brown shirt), Daphneiris Almonte, and Aaron Linner press prairie plants into clay plates as part of the Thinking Like a Prairie workshops. Plates will be fired and glazed and used at a potluck as part of the program next Spring. Photo Josh Anderson.

Programs support lifelong awareness of ND’s most important ecosystem

In early September, high schoolers from North Valley Career and Technology Center waded through hip-high prairie with plastic containers and bags, collecting seed heads, grasses and spoonfuls of soil.

In the days after, what they gathered from the prairie of South Branch Bison Ranch near Grafton were transformed into art: paint pig…