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Please enter your name, email and zip code below to sign up!
Please enter your name, email and zip code below to sign up!
Please enter your name, email and zip code below to sign up!
Please enter your name, email and zip code below to sign up!
Please enter your name, email and zip code below to sign up!
Please enter your name, email and zip code below to sign up!
Please enter your name, email and zip code below to sign up!
Please enter your name, email and zip code below to sign up!
Please enter your name, email and zip code below to sign up!
Please enter your name, email and zip code below to sign up!
Please enter your name, email and zip code below to sign up!
Please enter your name, email and zip code below to sign up!
Please enter your name, email and zip code below to sign up!
Please enter your name, email and zip code below to sign up!
Please enter your name, email and zip code below to sign up!
Please enter your name, email and zip code below to sign up!
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It takes a village to fully staff this fundraising opportunity!
A very special thank you to all who gave their time, including these top earning volunteer groups:
100% of donations are invested back into our community. No donations are used for operations. Community Center expenses are covered with the Joan Kroc Endowment and membership fees, allowing 100% of your donation to directly benefit community outreach activities.
Your donations make an impact through:
Donating items in need to people in our community
Providing food for families during tough times
Serving as a donation hub to help others
In support of this year’s Salvation Army Kroc Center Red Kettle Campaign, local artists Major Ronda Gilger, Christina Hull, Sidney Black Eagle, and Stephen Shortridge have put their own original twist on the traditional Salvation Army Red Kettle!
All donations to the Red Kettle Campaign stay in Kootenai County, helping support youth and adult arts, emergency services and food for families in need, winter clothing for local kids, summer camps, and so much more. Your generous support of Kettle of Dreams will directly impact children to take art classes at The Kroc, or a local senior to spend time in fellowship and create a work of art.
Ronda shows her love for God’s sheep as she has answered His calling to be an officer in The Salvation Army. Ronda has served in Women’s Ministries at Corps Assignments and at Divisional Headquarters. She finds great joy in creating programs and relationship building opportunities. Territorial appointments include Assistant Program Secretary, developing new programs and resources and leading the ARC (Adult Rehabilitation Center) Initiative for the US Western Territory.
She is a mother of four, grandmother of nine and the wife of the one and only Don Gilger. Ronda loves working in the arts and has her educational background in graphic arts, a BA in Psychology, and a Masters in Theology with a focus on Youth, Family and Culture. Ronda is an advocate for justice and searches for inspiration in the lives of those around her as they reach out to Christ.
She enjoys a good cup of coffee and conversations about life.
“I am constantly inspired by the endless beauty of God’s creations. Color and light are always the first elements in nature to catch my eye and I’ve spent the last fifteen years trying to capture a bit of that magic on canvas. Creating whimsical images in vibrant colors brings me great joy and “washes away the dust from my soul.” My hope is that my art brings a smile to your face, and that you walk away with a bit of the joy that I felt in creating it.”
Christina is passionate about sharing her love of creating art with children and adults and currently teaches Youth Art and adult Fine Art Classes at The Kroc Center.
Christina’s work can be found at both Bakery by the Lake locations, Embers by the Lake, and Embers by the Green.
Born and raised in Coeur d’Alene, Sidney Black Eagle has been an artist for 17 years. While she has done smaller art pieces in the past, her more recent work is comprised of larger art projects and commissioned pieces, like her eight-foot-tall lantern trees for the Spokane Valley Northwest Winterfest.
Sidney’s art spans a multitude of mediums including acrylic paints, oil paints, watercolor, pastels, charcoal, epoxy, mixed media, and even photography with her husband. She tends to mix multiple art forms to create something new. Sidney’s art borrows elements from different styles including realism, impressionism, abstract, and whimsical.
“I love art because it brings me joy,” Sidney said. “I enjoy sharing my work with others, including my children.”
Sidney teaches art classes called Create and Paint through the Coeur d’Alene Casino. She also teaches private classes. Please email Sidney Black Eagle at [email protected] for all inquiries regarding her work. Her Facebook, Instagram, and website are currently in development and will be available soon.
Born in Iowa, 1951, and raised in Southern California Stephen excelled in art throughout his schooling but had mainly studied commercial art. He took his first painting class while attending Idaho State University on a Water Polo Scholarship (Stephen was an All-American).
Stephen Charles Shortridge, the artist may be more familiar to you as an actor. During the seventies and eighties, Shortridge built an enviable career appearing in such well-known television series as “Welcome Back Kotter” and “The Love Boat”. He co-starred with Debbie Reynolds on the ABC show “Aloha Paradise”. He spent the year of 1987 playing the role of David Reed as part of the original cast on the CBS daytime soap opera “The Bold and the Beautiful”. Stephen also worked regularly as a model and appeared in over fifty TV commercials.
Stephen enjoyed acting but found painting much more creatively satisfying and explains, “In acting a large part of the creative process had taken place by the time I was involved. In contrast, painting gives me complete control from start to finish, which is good and bad. Good when the work is good...bad, when there is no one else to blame for bad but me.”
He met his wife Cathy on the beach after surfing in Newport Beach, California. They married in 1976 and shared an adventurous life, experiencing career changes from modeling and acting, to gift stores and art publishing. They’ve made homes in Manhattan, Connecticut, and Southern California. For the last 13 years they’ve lived in the mountainous region of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. They have three grown children and two grandsons.
“I thank God for everything, the least of which is to be creative, and to paraphrase a famous line from “Chariots of Fire”, ‘...when I paint I feel His pleasure’...this I certainly do!”
