By Rebecca Goldfine,Staff Writer

PARIS – A fashion designer, a performing artist, a photographer and a 3-D artist.

They will be the first batch of students to receive some of the large scholarship fund Pearl Starbird has dedicated to budding artists from this region.

Last fall, Starbird, 96, of Paris put more than $700,000 into a Maine Community Foundation scholarship. The non-endowed fund will be awarded – until it runs out – to graduates of any Oxford County high school or from Lake Region High School in Naples who wish to study art, with special consideration for students pursuing painting, drawing, sculpture and especially, classical music. Starbird was a cellist and painter.

The first four recipients are Crystal Giasson of Paris, Rebecca Ladner of Harrison, Joshua Parsons of Paris and Lynne Hazelton of Oxford.

“Their resumes are stellar,” Jean Warren of the Maine Community Foundation said recently. “Throughout their high school careers, they have been totally involved in the arts or music, which is quite a gift to the county.”

The students will share a pot of just under $63,000 for their 2006 to 2007 school year, Warren said. The award lasts one year, and the students are encouraged to apply again the following year.

Ladner, a junior studying fashion design at Lasell College in Newton, Mass., said she’s pursuing this field because she wants to create clothing for larger women. The scholarship will help pay for her senior year.

“I was pretty much stunned speechless,” the 2003 graduate of Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School said by phone Wednesday. “I didn’t respond for nearly a minute,” after her mother, Debra Ladner, called her with the news. “I was really excited. It has been kind of an expensive school. So I was like, Yay, I don’t have to worry about taking out another loan.'”

Giasson, who graduated last year from Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School, is studying performing and visual arts at Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vt.,, with a concentration in music.

“What’s neat is I got to meet her today,” Giasson said Wednesday evening in a phone conversation from her home in Paris. “I play piano and clarinet,” she said, adding that along with her grandmother, Frante Giasson of Waterford, the two entertained Starbird at Market Square Health Care Center in Paris in the afternoon.

Hazelton, also a 2005 Oxford Hills high school graduate, is enrolled at the Maine College of Art in Portland and working with 3-D art.

Parsons, a freshman at the Maine College of Art and a 2005 Oxford Hills high school graduate, is majoring in photography.

The two were unavailable for comment.

This scholarship is unusual in that its intent is to support as many local students as possible who want to major in art or music, and gives generous amounts of money toward that end rather than skimming interest off an invested account.

“She is so pleased and so humble about this gift she’s given to these students,” Warren said.

The selection committee included Mark Eastman, SAD 17 superintendent; David Murphy, SAD 44 superintendent; Michael Shaughnessy, chairman of University of Southern Maine’s art department; Anne Stanley, rector at Christ Episcopal Church; and Keith Willoughby, a close friend of Starbird’s from Waterford.

The next deadline for the scholarship applicants is May 15. Information on the scholarship is available through the Maine Community Foundation. On its Web site, www.mainecf.org, look under “2006 Scholarship Applications” and then, under scholarships by county, go to Oxford County.