When he speaks, his words are sometimes just murmurs, dropping away before being understood. They fall like water into the deep hum of his Bismarck art studio. But not this time.

Soft-spoken Wayne Pruse's big voice came out a couple months ago during a recent project when some foster home teens were taking their role in the creation of three life-sized sculptures far too casually for his liking.

Pruse, 55, a Bismarck artist and gallery owner, saw his design turning ramshackle as he watched students sloppily put together a wire frame so that one hip was lower than the other. And he saw them just casually toss plaster of Paris onto a frame. Some of the kids had expressed in the past they didn't think it was "cool" that the foster home was forcing them to be involved in making sculptures.

"This is garbage," Pruse said, not quietly, and grabbed plaster and threw the wet mess onto the floor.

"Either you take this seriously or get out of my studio," he told them.

He said he saw the kids' eyes get big.

"I don't think anyone had ever done that to them before," Pruse said.

And he said he never had to do that again.

"Some of the troublemakers turned into shining stars," said Pruse, who, besides selling his art at his downtown studio, which is attached to the Impact gift store at 324 E. Broadway Ave., is director of the art department at United Tribes Technical College.

"They worked hard."

He said one girl gave him a big hug at the end of the project, was crying, and told Pruse she was always going to remember this experience.

"I'm going to miss them," Pruse said.

The sculptures are finished now.

He said Charles Hall Youth Services staff members, upon seeing the finished sculptures, said things like, "Our kids did that?"

"I was speechless," said Jenna Kirchmeier, house manager for one of Charles Hall Youth Services' three foster homes.

Pruse said he thinks the pilot project, in which he served as a mentor, was a "huge" success with "a bunch of beautiful art."

"Look at what these kids can do, if given the chance," he said.

Artist Lynn Prouty, Pruse's wife, said a woman from Louisville, Ky., was in the gallery recently and just stood in front of the sculptures with her mouth hanging open. "She said she was amazed," Prouty said. "She said, 'I don't care if they're at-risk youth. They've got a lot of talent.' "

Prouty worked with the kids, too, exposing them to calligraphy, clay pottery and other art forms. She said something she'll remember about the experience are the moments when these kids - who didn't come in as art students, just regular kids being exposed to art - would tell her they had finally found something they were passionate about. "They got so excited."

Tim Green, Charles Hall's director of residential services, said some of Hall's foster kids have even brought parents to view the completed artwork.

Green said this program started last fall as an answer to a problem.

Private grants have dried up that in the past paid for a $10,000 summer art program at United Tribes Technical College for the foster kids.

And so Charles Hall decided to try to approach things in another way - by trying to make the program self-sustaining.

Pruse was willing to design legitimate art pieces and then serve as a mentor at his studio where he would guide the foster kids, a total of about 40 students, through the creation of the sculptures. The completed art would then be sold at auction with the proceeds going to pay for following year's program.

The auction happens at 7 p.m. Saturday at Impact Gallery and will include other art by foster kids, created under Prouty's guidance - such as clay sculptures and air-brushed T-shirts.

The main auction items are the 4-foot-long "Spirits of the Plains," Pruse's designs made by the students. The three creations are stiff wire and plaster-of-Paris replications of warriors' regalia and a woman's dress - all shaped as if people were in them. Rounded, vacant space.

They are a ghostly white, like they've been dipped in rough frost, and are affixed to canvas-wrapped wood. Each piece has details, such as crosses, stars, hail, lightning, feathers, a bear claw necklace, fringe and so on. But the sculptures are meant to be generic enough that they could have been worn by members of a number of northern Plains tribes. Details that would be specific to a particular tribe were purposely left off.

The woman's dress, which includes an arm holding a cradleboard, is called "Woman Spirit." The other two are "Warrior Spirit" and "Split Horn Bonnet Spirit."

A 13-year-old girl in the project said one challenge was trying to make parts of the sculpture look wind-blown. She would have to hold onto pieces of plaster as they dried while she worked on other pieces of plaster.

A 14-year-old female student said she never considered herself to be "artsy," but because of this experience is "definitely going to join art classes."

She said she has figured out that it doesn't matter what other people think about what she makes.

"Whatever you make is your own … It means value to you," she said.

For more information about the 7 p.m. Saturday auction at Impact, call 255-6410.

(Reach reporter Virginia Grantier at 250-8254 or at virginia.grantier@bismarcktribune.com)