- Sara Barraclough connects with community through art drops, hiding pieces several times weekly.
- She is a life skills teacher a local school and started this to positively engage with kids during summer breaks.
- Barraclough's woodcarving hobby stems from personal challenges and ancestral connections.
ST. GEORGE — Art has long been a way for Sara Barraclough to connect with herself and others, and recently, she's found another way to do just that with what she calls art drops.
A few times a week, Barraclough — a woodcarver and painter — creates a unique art piece and posts it on the local Facebook page with a clue to where it's at. It didn't take long for her to see that this simple gesture could bring smiles to people's faces.
"I was at Washington Wheels Park with my daughter, and I took the first piece out and hid it, and some people came pretty quick," she said. "They had three little girls, and they posted a picture of it and they were just super excited about it.
"There was that high of making someone happy, so I did it again, and it was the same response. The more people were responding to that, the better it was making me feel."
Barraclough, who is also a life skills teacher at a local charter school, said that part of the reason she started doing this is because with the summers off, she wanted a way to connect with kids in a positive way. She also said that like many, she has faced her share of life challenges.
"We all have positive and negative input in life," she said. "We go through highs, and we go through lows and we go through things that are difficult to deal with. With the negative input, we have to channel it somehow, and you can either channel that in a positive way or a negative way.
"This summer, I was struggling when school ended," she continued. "You go from having a lot of kids the whole day to absolutely nothing. It's quiet, and you're sitting at home. I just needed a way to give and make someone happy."
Barraclough started woodcarving and painting about 10 years ago after life took a difficult turn. She said it was a also way to connect to her ancestral roots and turn what felt very negative to her at the time into a "physical positive."
"For me, I do well when I can learn something," she said. "If I'm going through something rough, I kind of immerse myself in learning something new because with art especially, you're channeling it into a physical positive.
"I was a new mom, and my daughter was about a year old and things were not very good with my marriage, and I didn't know what to do," she added. "I knew that my great grandpa and great grandma were both master wood carvers from Scandinavia. I thought, 'I should learn to wood carve and keep it in the family.'"
She quickly found that she was really good at it. She started posting some of her creations on social media under the handle @theclevercarver, and it snowballed.
"I've been really lucky in the wood carving community," she said. "I've been able to have a few books published, and I won a couple of awards, and it's been a really fun hobby to help connect with the community."
Barraclough said that she really hopes to do art drops throughout the summer. KSL went with her on a recent art drop and witnessed the quick retrieval of a newly painted "SpongeBob SquarePants"-themed art piece.
"I just love art, and I think art makes people happy," she said. "Treasure hunts make people happy, especially when they're attainable. If it makes people happy, why not spread some happiness?"
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Arianne Brown
