Exploring values in community life, Artists & Communities participants examined the traditions, beliefs and perceptions that underpin their sense of self and kinship with others. Plains Art Museum Fargo, North Dakota Sandy Ben-Haim, Curator of Education Richard Mock, Printmaker The young people and adults who participated in the Artists & Communities project at the Plains Art Museum (Fargo, North Dakota) created a body of work that is a graphic representation of their community's values. Under the stewardship of printmaker Richard Mock, they also learned some of the ideals that govern the creative process. People Are Destroying The Earth, Help Prevent It!, © 2000, Joanna Jan. Mock's starting point in teaching about using linocut prints as an editorial medium was to have his students develop a point of view through research and discussion. "We started…by dealing with the environmental issue of pollution," Mock begins. "Then, I pulled a lot of articles off of the Internet on [a range of] topics, and I had those out on a table that they had access to…so they had lots of different views on things." The students then began to learn the skills for translating their ideas into visual form. For Museum Curator of Education Sandy Ben-Haim, Mock "…very much saw the process of artmaking [as] a metaphor for life…He said that working with linoleum prints, 'You have to make do with your initial choices; if you make a choice to make a cut, you have to work with it - you can't erase it,' so that's kind of like a value statement in itself." TV Takes Command, © 2000, Elizabeth Karlins. The resulting body of prints was wide-ranging in the issues explored and the viewpoints expressed. "They brought up the ecology, pollution, racial harmony, the media, abortion, guns…as well as the recent floods in this area. It was everything from global issues to flooding and mosquitoes, which [are] very local issues," says Ben-Haim. Mock saw the studio as a forum for the exchange of participants' occasionally divergent opinions. "As they did prints, I would hang them up on the wall…so they could all see what was going on, what the others were doing," he states. "It's communal…there was a constant dialogue between [students] about their work. That they could express these things shows that it was a good environment for them…what we had set up was open enough so that they could be pretty personal." Chelse Preston in linocut workshop. Of the work featured in the culminating exhibition and book Hardlines, Ben-Haim comments: "The ideas, the values - sometimes we think our kids don't think or feel 'deeply,' but this [work] shows what our kids are really absorbing from their environment, what they're worrying about." Additional samples of "Values" projects are included in the book, Artists & Communities: America Creates for the Millenium.