Edmonds Beacon - Your Hometown News Source

And it all sprang from her mind.

The seeds were planted during Jeri Hamilton's seventh grade art class in rural Ellensburg, a town with very little art exposure at the time.

"I felt like I'd died and gone to heaven," she said when relating her experience.

From that point on, Hamilton harbored a desire to make that little slice of heaven available to others.

Since 1981, that desire has found expression at the annual Edmonds Arts Festival (EAF) in the form of the Junior Art exhibit that lines the halls of the Frances Anderson Center each Father's Day weekend.

But for Hamilton's vision and per...