Parents were reminded of this week's camp art show by a sign on the door that read, "Art Show at 12:45 pm. I hope you like it." Everyone was excited to show their work from the week: mixed media collage on boards, found object sculptures that incorporated jokes or other ideas, Picasso-inspired paintings, found object prints that had been embellished by sewing as well as clay and cardboard creations.

Here are some pictures from the second half of the week that capture the work leading up to the art show:

And one more picture...a cloud that captured our attention and led to a lively discussion on the last day of camp! We saw a dragon, a hat, a pencil guy, an iguana and more!

This week we are opening with clay, and it's interesting to see what skills the children bring with them to camp and what ideas and concepts develop during our time together. Right away, we saw children tackling the challenge of building up with clay, from creating animals to rolling up slabs and standing them on end. On Tuesday, we made collections of shapes (spheres, cubes, cones, coils, etc.) and found ways to connect the shapes as a group. We saw a castle, a person and a dog form from this collection.

During our small group work, we have explored materials that will become incorporated into projects over the course of the week. We mixed our own paint and developed a customized color palette to use at the easels and in our mixed media collage work. We also explored the marks that found objects can make and made small and large compositions from these marks. We have also planned and begun constructing found object sculptures that incorporate a joke or idea that interest the children.

After lunch each day, the studio is open for the free exploration. We have been working at the easels, in the message center and at the light table as well as exploring balls and tunnels.

We spent a week of provocations and exercises to take the girls out of their comfort zones and open them up to new materials and techniques. We love seeing how they made decisions and solved problems in order to infuse what's meaningful to them into their work. 

On the last day of camp, the girls set up an art show to showcase their work for the week. Enjoy!

We're so excited to have a group of older girls in camp this week. They bring with them ideas, skills, perspectives and a liveliness that makes for a fun and interesting week.

We have spent the first few days of camp exploring materials and doing exercises to build up to our culminating projects. Thanks to a recent donation of 5X7 index cards, we have an unending supply of cards to test out different drawing and painting techniques. We are collecting the cards from our experiences in cigar boxes: doodles, blind contour drawings, water color technique so far. We also mixed our own tempera paint and made new liquid water color from dried out markers.

One of our projects started off with the girls applying tissue paper to reclaimed canvases. Next we covered the textured surface with our custom mixed paints. We will continue incorporating other media into this piece as the week progresses.

Another project we are working on involves integrating a joke, fortune or quote into a found object sculpture. We are busy gathering and creating materials for this project.