Little ones can do recycled artwork, too

Inspired by the community college students up the street, the Children's Museum of Northern Nevada offered a Recycled Art workshop free with regular admission Saturday.

"This is the first entry," said Frieda Ford of the museum's board of directors. "It's a nice 3-year-old Easter composition."

She held up a sheet of paper with curly green grass hiding colored eggs, a tongue depressor fence and plastic insects and buttons secured in the sky with liberal use of white school glue.

The artist, 3-year-old Hayleigh Agorastos, had moved on to play with the big walk-on piano, but the rest of her family was still working on recycled art.

There was 6-year-old Nakayla, an Empire Elementary student, working on a large cardboard dinosaur.

"We're all family," explained Nakayla, reaching for a red pen to add eyes to her cardboard creature. She named it "Rainbow."

Their father, Nick Agorastos, a firefighter/paramedic with Douglas County, was there helping her out.

"We come here quite a bit with them," he said.

Eleven-year-old sister Megan, who attends Eagle Valley Middle School, was adding a butterfly to a tree with a toilet paper truck. Peeking out of the greenery was a plastic Winnie the Pooh. She named her piece "Honey."

Kelly Graver of Carson City brought Jade, 7, who attends Eagle Valley Middle School, and blue-eyed Clay, 5, wearing yellow rubber boots, to the museum. They worked on a mixed media piece unofficially named "Angel Under Glass" because it had a ribbon and plastic pearl angel inside an upside-down clear plastic container.

Museum staff started collecting "stuff that otherwise would have been thrown away" back in January, said Ford. The annual workshop was organized to celebrate Earth Day, just like the exhibit in the Western Nevada Community College.

The director of the Children's Museum of Northern Nevada, Denise Sins, is involved in both events. She won second place in the Most Creative category at the community college art contest for her piece "Re-Hung."