Sometimes it takes a death to breathe new life into a program.

It was when Cecelia Barringer died that Reedsport Branch Library, Meals on Wheels, the Umpqua Discovery Center, and Gardiner-Reedsport-Winchester Bay STEP all benefited, as did Reedsport Junior/Senior High School.

But it wasn’t sports or music the former Reedsport resident wanted to fund when she left money to the high school, said JoAnn Hamilton, a personal representative of Barringer’s estate.

It was art.

“She was very much into art,” JoAnn Hamilton said.

The Reedsport School District received $100,000 from Barringer’s estate in April 2008 and this year’s students are benefiting. The money is earmarked for arts and crafts, especially painting and drawing, according to a memo from former district Superintendent Forrest Bell.

The school district established a memorial fund with the money — the largest trust managed by the district. The next largest trust, $50,000, benefits Highland Elementary School’s library. At least three other trusts help pay for scholarships.

The entire Barringer grant may be spent at the request of the art teacher, with the approval of the superintendent and district board.

“She was artistic herself, and she felt very close to Reedsport. She felt that the school needed it,” Hamilton said.

And the support couldn’t have come at a better time for Reedsport art teacher Kyle Mulligan.

“It’s amazing,” Mulligan said. “I never knew her.”

Mulligan, who began teaching art at Reedsport High School in 2007, was eager to make a few purchases.

The high school bought 20 studio easels for about $3,000 and a tabletop printing press for $2,000, Mulligan said. Barringer’s money also has paid for about $2,000 in paints, brushes and other upgraded materials for the school’s dozens of advanced art students.

Mulligan said the school’s art studio had been set up largely for crafts, not for fine art.

“The room itself is very much geared toward pottery,” he said. “Craft is a skill ... that is different from art. Art is more about communication ... that’s all about your life experience.”

At some point, Mulligan may gain the use of another classroom, which he said may become a painting and drawing studio. That studio would give fine art students sanctuary from the dust and grime of ceramics.

He has been teaching students how to draw and paint, how to make prints and stretch their own canvasses.

“It’s always encouraging when they pull the print and it looks better than they were expecting,” Mulligan said.

And by adding or improving fine art tools, Mulligan said students will have more options than just pottery in the kind of work they do.