AVILLA, MO. — With four young children, a farm to run and limited financial resources, Rachel Wilson needed art supplies that were close to home and cheap.

She found fallen hedge branches.

Her artist's eye saw horses.

"The sticks that I found ... I could just see that it was horse form," she said. "They needed to be a large form."

Her horses are certainly large. One is the size of a live plow horse, and they can take the weight of a person almost as easily as the real thing.

Her love of art began when she was a child.

When she went to Missouri Southern University, it was on a full-ride Thomas Hart Benton scholarship in the fine arts.

"That's when I started taking art seriously," she recalled. "And it's something I've taken real seriously the last three years."

Her first love was oil painting, but that is "not really kid-friendly. ... It doesn't wash out well," she said.

So she moved to acrylics. Her children, who range in age from 1 to 8, join her, creating their own paintings with the fast-drying, water-based paint.

She recently sold a two-canvas painting — "an abstract take on a still life" — that will hang in the lobby of the Market Station Apartments in Kansas City.

But when the weather is nice, everybody likes to get outside. Looking for an outdoor art project this spring led her to the woods.

She decided she would create an "assemblage" from natural materials.

Now, even her little ones have been working on their own sculptures. Cost was an additional incentive.

"We've been through some tight times with farming," said Wilson, a "city girl" from Webb City who loves the farming life with her husband, Kyle, a third-generation farmer.

Now, it's a family event. Kyle Wilson drives the pickup, and she and the kids "pick up sticks." Those sticks, from Osage orange trees planted for hedges, are big, shapely and resistant.

"As far as I can tell, it lasts for just about forever," she said of the wood.