Past Youth Art Camps

This week we will take much of our inspiration from the wide range of artists of the New Deal and WPA including Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Aaron Douglas, Rosa Rush, and Jacob Lawrence. Students will learn about the role art played in helping lift the United States out of the Great Depression and the wide spread legacy of these programs that remains visible to this day. Like the works of this era, our projects will spark the collective spirit of art making and celebrate belonging.

This week our artworks will be inspired by both the "high" art of Abstract Expressionism and the "low" art of a newly expanded post-war pop culture. One day we might have fun absorbing the influences of action painting (think Jackson Pollack) and color field painting (think Mark Rothko), and on another day make work related to the birth of rock and roll and artists like Sister Rosetta Tharpe who pioneered the movement.

In this week of art camp, students will learn about the aesthetic revolutions of Pop Art, Op Art, minimalism and performance art, as well as the social revolutions that inspired them. Our art projects will explore the still relevant influences of consumerism, mass production, and entertainment exemplified by Pop artists as well as provide an opportunity to play with graphic art, color, and repeated patterns.

The final week of our summer camp season will be an exciting investigation into two decades that many of us lived through: the 1980's and 90's. Some of our projects will take inspiration from Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, the Guerrilla Girls, and Street Art, a paradoxical movement that returned to more traditional figurative imagery while also rejecting the primacy of galleries and museums spaces. We will also be inspired by the introduction of digital art, music videos, and the zine. This one might be the most fun for parents!

These classes are sure to spark the creative spirit and produce some interesting and amazing works of art! Each day, students will receive a mystery bag of art supplies that must be put to use in some way in an art work of their design. Students will spend time planning their artwork and will have tokens that they can use to "buy" additional supplies to supplement what comes in their bag. At the end of the day, we will see all the different ways we've created using similar materials!

Students will create up to four adorable holiday ornaments out of simple paper tubes. The templates will include a fox, a saguaro cactus, a gnome home, and an owl. Students can create at their own pace in this relaxed workshop environment and explore the materials on hand. Everyone is sure to make at least one new favorite to put on the tree!