She is a teeny tiny woman, when you compare her to the size of her eating utensils.

Her forks are bigger than she.

When the forks are propped up, Josephine Eckman, less than 5 feet tall, has to use a stepstool to reach their tips.

Fee, fi, fo fum, who left some giant's forks with Eckman?

That would be the Community Foundation of Grand Forks, East Grand Forks and Region, which has given more than 50 of these 80-pound, 6-foot-high forks to artists in the region to create upon as they please. The resulting creations, bought for $1,500 by sponsors, will be displayed throughout Grand Forks beginning June 12, said Patti Lazarus, the Community Foundation's executive director. The money will benefit two charities there - Healthy Families and the Community Violence Intervention Center.

So for several weeks, Eckman's students - Eckman, 58, is Horizon Middle School's art teacher - have been sharing their art room with two big forks.

After school, Eckman has been staying late to paint. Eckman, whose taste in art ranges from abstract to realism and about all art in between, has created two different creations: One is sweet, with earth, sky and water tones and prairie roses to signify the city's rebirth after the 1997 flood. She calls it "Forklift."

Her other fork doesn't make a matched set.

The other fork is a slap of red with a Chinese character on its front and a series of lucky numbers running down the back of it as well as the word "Blessing," which is also the meaning of the Chinese character. The series of numbers on the back are the longitude and latitude numbers for the Grand Forks airport.

This is definitely Eckman's first fork project, probably her last utensil project, unless Grand Forks changes its name to Grand Knives or Grand Spoons.

But when it comes to projects in general, who knows how many she has made. But her day isn't complete without projects.

"I feel I haven't accomplished anything unless I've created something that day," she said.

She quilts, or paints or draws. She also does ceramics, whittles and is famous in her circles for her pickles, caramel rolls and egg rolls.

Her sewing machine at home is always set up and ready for work. Some of spring's first crocuses were brought home, there for the moment when she had time for a drawing or painting break.

"I don't need coffee or drugs," she said.

Seeing good art literally gives her a physical high, she said.

For a vacation once, she and her supportive husband, Marvin Eckman, an enabler when it comes to her fabric-buying habit, got in the RV with the goal of hitting all of the state's quilting shops and Chinese restaurants. That lasted about a week, until the RV started to break down. But their findings on the food from a week's worth of stops - the best Chinese food is in Minot.

Her artistic abilities were spotted in seventh grade. Her teacher in Napoleon kept her in at recess to work with her on art projects.

As a young wife, in the 1980s, days of little money, she and her husband decided she should take an art class anyway, even though they really couldn't afford it. She was so excited, the night before the class, "I couldn't sleep all night," she said.

Eckman, who now has an elementary education degree and a minor in art, has been teaching art in Bismarck since 1991.

When she retires, she hopes to have more time to paint and develop her own style. But the main thing she hopes she accomplishes with her life has nothing to do with her own art.

She said she hopes she has been able to inspire children to express and release themselves through art.

"It's such a dynamic, vital part of life," Eckman said.

(Reach reporter Virginia Grantier at 250-8254 or at vgrantier@ndonline.com.)