The arts are a lifelong endeavor: that’s one of the messages Northport Public School art teacher Jen Evans is hoping to convey with “Origin & Echo,” a first-of-its-kind art show set to launch next week at the Northport Arts Association building. It should be an easy message to get across, given that the ages of the artists involved literally range from 0 to 99.

Running from Thursday, May 1-11, the Origin & Echo exhibit is first and foremost a student art showcase. Almost every member of Northport Public School’s K-12 student body has prepared a piece of artwork for the project, along with some other local youngsters. The twist is that Evans has also recruited a small army of adult artists to participate in the show, from throughout Leelanau County and beyond. Each adult was given a student’s artwork at random and asked to create a “response” piece. The final exhibit will present each student’s “origin” artwork alongside the adult artist’s complementary “echo” piece.

“This idea has been percolating in my brain now for about 10 years,” Evans says. “At Northport Public School, we are positioned in a really neat location. We have Northport Highlands Senior Living right behind us, and then just up the hill is the Dandeion Discovery Center. So, I just thought, ‘Wow, we're just all within walking distance. Wouldn't it be cool if we could have an intergenerational art show of some sort?’”

Evans started working last fall on a blueprint for how to take Origin & Echo from hypothetical concept to reality. In January, she officially took the plunge, putting out a press release in search of community artists who might want to participate.

The response was impressive. For a few weeks, emails were flooding into Evans’ inbox, and she ended the month with a list of 50 interest artists. Some help from the Northport Arts Association helped get the word out further. When the show launches next week, Evans expects to have “about 125 works of art from students, and then 125 responses from adults.”

The responding artists come from all backgrounds and levels of artistic excellence. Some are professionals working right here in northern Michigan. A few are non-local artists who caught wind of the project and wanted to participate, some from as far as California. Others are hobbyists who simply wanted a way to connect with the next generation – or, in some cases, the next, next, next generation.

“Our youngest artist is not even one; she’s probably around six months old,” Evans says. “And then, on the other end of the spectrum, there are nine artists up at Northport Highlands that are participating. Our oldest artist is 99 years old, and he is actually paired with the six-month-old.”

The biggest group of involved artists are the students at Northport Public School. Evans says “every single student from kindergarten through ninth grade” has submitted a piece for the art show, along with the 22 high-schoolers who take art courses. Those pieces range from watercolor paintings from the kindergartners to felted works of art from the middle-schoolers.

“The high school students, meanwhile, have a larger body of work and were able to choose whichever piece they wanted to use,” Evans notes.

The response pieces will be even more diverse, and usually won’t even be in the same medium as the origin artwork from the students.

“Our adult artists are doing everything from film and video to stained glass artworks,” Evans says. “We’ll have large-scale welded pieces and beautiful paintings. We have ceramicists echoing students' works. Most of the art will be dropped off this week, but the pieces I’ve seen so far are so phenomenal.”

Dana Fear, a professional metalsmith based in Cedar, says she was drawn to participate in Origin & Echo after thinking about her own days as a young, budding artist.

“I started back in high school,” Fear says. “I went to a pretty large high school and actually got the senior art award, and was voted ‘Most Artistic Female’ by my classmates. Art was something that was very much a part of my life when I was in school, and so I appreciate opportunities to connect with kids who are interested in art and exploring art as they're going through school.”

Origin & Echo will begin next Thursday, May 1 with a bit of a surprise unveiling: Evans says none of the students will see the responses to their artwork until the opening of the show.

“The students won't know who they've been paired with or anything about their echo until they show up on May 1,” Evans tells the Leelanau Ticker. “That day, at 2:20pm, the entire school is going to walk down to the Northport Arts Association to see all the works, and any adult artist who wants to meet the student that did the original piece is invited, too.”

“I don’t think I've ever been so excited to go to a show opening before,” Fear says. “I’m really looking forward to seeing the students and what it means to them to have adults seriously consider their piece of art. This project isn't like a typical art show. Every single student gets acknowledgement of their piece, and thinking back to the art student in me, I probably would have loved that.”