Susan Parker founded the traveling after-school art class Artspark two years ago out of necessity.

“I taught art for 25 years in Vermont and moved to Park City and couldn’t believe there wasn’t a lot of art-education opportunities for children in kindergarten through fifth grade,” Parker said during an interview. “While art education here does begin at the middle-school level, I do know how important the early years are for artistic development and creativity.”

Parker decided if art wasn’t being taught in the schools and the schools weren’t able to fund it, there was be room for an after-school program.

“The Artspark classes run one day a week in the four Park City elementary schools and at Ecker Hill Middle School,” she said. “It’s tuition based at $120 per each six-week session, but we do offer two free scholarships in each school.”

The scholarships help balance out the classes and give opportunity to children whose families cannot afford the tuition, Parker said.

Parker teamed with Anita Slevin, a retired art teacher from New Jersey, to help expand Artspark classes, which are also sponsored by Spiro Arts.

“Anita works at Trailside on Mondays,” Parker said. “I do all the other schools, and it’s nice to have someone to collaborate and bounce ideas off.”

Parker said the after-school slot helps working parents.

“I used to be a working mom and I know at 3 p.m. you can’t drop work and go get your child and transport them to their activities It just doesn’t work for some parents. This way, the child just walks from their classroom to another room and they’re there until 5 p.m.”

Parker came up with the Artspark model after observing art classes at various schools.

“I found a lot of the art is done on the standard eight-and-a-half -by-11-inch paper,” she said. “The teachers are doing the best they can and have parent volunteers, but they weren’t pushing kids the way they should be pushed when it comes to art.”

So, Parker’s program, which embraces all forms of artistic disciplines, foregoes the smaller paintings for larger ones.

“If we’re painting we paint big,” she said. “We also work with clay and sculpture, papier mache’ and wood sculpture. We expose kids to the whole realm of art with lots of different media.”

During the past two years, Parker has noticed how students have adjusted to the program.

“You see students in the beginning of the sessions rush through their projects,” she said. “They’re used to having only a short time in the classroom, but when they discover it’s a two hour class, they begin to take that time to think about their project and not be so rushed.”

Usually if art is taught in schools, the teachers do the best they can with the parent volunteers, but the projects usually must be started and finished within 30 minutes, Parker said.

“At end of our two-hour class, we get together and look at the work and talk about how they did it and what they needed to overcome to create the work,” she said. “There is more reflection and meaning in the sessions.”

While Artspark is running smoothly these days, there were challenging times during the early sessions, Parker said.

“It’s a traveling art school, and rather than being in my own room and reaching for what I needed, I had to go to my car,” she said. “Even now my car is like a pick-up truck of arts supplies.”

These days the challenge is scheduling.

“We have to work everything out with the schools and that includes finding a room that is unoccupied,” Parker said. “Once you get beyond those kinks, you forget all the problems when the kids arrive.”

Some of the students in the program have been with Artspark since its inception, and Parker has seen their artistic development.

“The relationships you build with the students is priceless,” she said. “And you get to see how quickly they’re growing at that age. And you see growth in their artistic skills and creative thinking.”

Still, Parker said, the sessions are flexible enough for students to drop in and drop out when the need arrives.

“Some leave during the winter and get involved with skiing and then come back to us,” she said. “The program is designed not to repeat for four years. Even though principles and concepts repeat in art, but the projects don’t. So a child can be with us from second grade to fifth grade and never do the same project.”

The new Artspark sessions are scheduled to begin Monday, Jan. 3. Tuition is $120 for one six-week session, which includes all the art supplies. For more information visit http://www.spiroarts.org or contact Susan Parker at (802) 878-7426 or [email protected] .