The Dalles Art Center is offering five classes during “2017 Winter Break Art Camp” Dec. 20-23. Classes are for ages 6 to 14. Signups are at The Dalles Art Center, 220 E. 4th Street, The Dalles.

It’s mid-day on a Saturday in February, and artist Yvonne Pepin-Wakefield is pulling on a pair of heavy work gloves. “I melted my first ones,” she says as she heads out the back door of her working studio at Lone Pine dressed in jeans and a work shirt and takes a short trail down an embankment. She is headed for “the pit,” a large hole about 3 ½ feet deep currently capped by large sheets of corrugated sheet metal. Portions of the covering metal are blackened by heat and smoke.