Artist Frank Etxaniz brought a rainbow of basketballs, colorful hoops and encouragement to student artists who used rainbow colors to decorate T-shirts at South Baker Intermediate School last week.

The lively activities, which also are built around time inside the school to research and study health-related issues, were all part of the school’s KIDS-HEAL program started in Baker City about four years ago.

The rainbow basketball game includes 200 balls and 14 hoops painted seven colors — plus camo.

“What’s not to like,” asks Frank, as he’s known by students and staff. “And it premiered here at South Baker.”

Students ran a relay race before returning to the outdoor basketball court to try to sink as many colored balls into a net of the same color. In addition to running, the fourth- and fifth-graders also did jumping jacks and sit-ups between hoop shoots. Sixth-graders did the KIDS-HEAL activities Wednesday and traveled to the middle school Thursday to get better acquainted with the school they will attend when classes resume in the fall.

Another part of the program’s events called for students to create lasting KIDS-HEAL artwork on white T-shirts using a rainbow of colors.

“When you make art, you call forth energy,” Frank says. “They need physical activity to burn off the energy you called forth.”

KIDS-HEAL addresses the children’s creative, physical, nutritional, emotional, environmental and cultural health, he says. HEAL is an acronym for health education arts laboratory.

It’s the laboratory aspect of the curriculum that especially appeals to school teachers and administrators. If something isn’t working, they brainstorm better ways to implement programs, said Nanette Lehman, South Baker principal, and Betty Palmer, the 5J District’s assistant superintendent.

And students have the same opportunity to make changes through the same brainstorming process and then mounting a letter-writing campaign to explain what they would like to see happen in the program.

Frank, a Portland artist and the founder and organizer of KIDS-HEAL, brought the program first to South Baker Intermediate School after meeting Isabella Evans, who was a patient at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital undergoing treatment for leukemia. Isabella was a fifth-grader at South Baker when she first met Frank. She is finishing her junior year at Baker High School this year.

Frank says on the KIDS-HEAL website that his experience as a volunteer artist-in-residence at Doernbecher’s inspired him to create the nonprofit Children’s Healing Art Project (CHAP), which has since evolved into KIDS-HEAL.

When Isabella returned to South Baker as a sixth-grader, Palmer said she brought Frank, who had come to appreciate Isabella’s creativity while she was hospitalized in Portland, to Palmer’s office at South Baker. The school struck a bargain to serve as a pilot site for Frank’s plan to develop an art, nutrition and health education program.

Over the past three years, the program has expanded into schools in Malheur and Harney counties, and it will start in Grant County next year.

Frank says he is focusing on what he calls “the forgotten corner of Oregon.”

He was born in Ontario and although he’s traveled and worked in New York and other large cities, he wants to help overcome the attitude of those who he says usually “disrespect the culture of rural Oregon.”

“I can speak Eastern Oregon,” he says.

Lehman said her school is appreciative of the energy and enthusiasm Frank brings to students during his five or six visits during the year.

“Frank’s mission and goal of supporting and helping rural Eastern Oregon Schools is commendable,” Lehman said.

While the program began with a focus on physical health and cancer prevention, last week’s lesson also discussed change.

“We started with cancer, diabetes, bone health and teeth,” Frank said. “Now, it’s stress, change, the importance of sleep, social respect and collaboration.”

See more in the May 29, 2017, issue of the Baker City Herald.