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Photo by Bob Pennell Emily Trum, 15, works Thursday on a larger-than-life fairy she created in a summer sculpture class. Art that's too big for one room Summer class lets students fill school -- and beyond By VICKI GUARINO With the whole art room -- not to mention the entire school -- for studio space, teacher Lauren Sleat invited her students to stretch out. "I wanted them to be able to go big, really big," Sleat says, "above and beyond." So students in Sleat's summer school sculpture class at St. Mary's School have been stretching not only their imaginations, but their arms and legs. Joel Frank has to stand on a chair to paint zebra stripes on his life-size harlequin. Balanced on a floor-ceiling pole for stability, the papier-mache work is the St. Mary's sophomore's first sculpture. Nearby, Jonathan McGraw, a fifth-grader from Ashland's Waldorf School, has to crawl across a 6-foot table to daub green paint on his writhing dragon. So much green, he says, he's getting awfully tired of the color. Fairy dancers twirl and serpents spew flame across the room as the two-week session in papier-mache sculpture comes to a close. For awhile, students had the option of working outdoors if they needed the elbow room for themselves and their fanciful creations. Ordinarily, sculpture at St. Mary's is measured in inches, not feet and yards. Students have to share scarce space with the entire school, Sleat explains. She offered the summer class because now she can give kids room. Sleat began the summer session -- her first at the school -- by suggesting fantasy works of the Jurassic Park variety. But she said she didn't want to impose limits. "You can do whatever you want," she told her seven students. St. Mary's sophomore Emily Trum has been drawing fairy dancers on her bedroom wall for months, so creating one to fill the room seen natural. "It's just something out of the ordinary," she says. Jonathan's inspiration was Chinese lore. Some time ago, he says, he read about Chinese birth animals. By time and date of birth, he learned that his mother's birth animal is a tiger, his father's a boar, and one brother's a rooster. "Figures," he says of the brother; "he's annoying." Jonathan is the dragon. He didn't have time to create all three animals, so he settled on his own. Eventually, he plans on suspending it in his bedroom. Before that, however, the dragon and all of the other pieces will move outdoors to school grounds, where they will greet students at the start of the fall term. Youngsters who are interested in attending a similar class are invited to call the St. Mary's School office, 773-7877, to join a signup list. Sleat says if there is enough interest -- six or seven students would do it -- she would run a second two-week session this summer. The class would cost $120, including all materials. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA