In this workshop, you will learn basic Special FX makeup techniques to create truly gruesome effects just in time for Halloween! You will learn how to paint black eyes and bruises and how to make an easy monster skin out of household gelation and food coloring. For a finishing touch, we will take our effects to the extreme with some fake blood. It's sure to be a frightfully good time! 
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Prairie Arts Center is excited to partner with the OSU Museum of Art again this year for our Fall Break Camp. Camp will begin with a visit to the museum for an interactive tour of their current exhibition, Small Worlds: Carolyn Cardenas and Contradictions: Bobby Ross. Cardenas paints tiny, highly detailed interiors and complex urban scenes while Ross works on large canvases and creates surrealist settings that explore contradictions- good and evil, harmony and discord, truth and lies, etc. Both artists are storytellers. Students will think about how we tell stories visually in an artwork and imagine a story of their own into being. Making use of Ross' surrealism and Cardenas' scale and interior settings, we will create shadow boxes full of characters and strange happenings.
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This summer camp season, our theme was Art Through the Decades. During our 1970s inspired camp, we learned about the land art movement and looked at iconic works by Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt, and the more recent (and smaller scale) works of Andy Goldsworthy. We took these artists' lead, and created ephemeral, nature-based works of our own. Instead of glueing anything down, the students documented their work with photographs and took the printed images home as artifacts of their experience. It was one of the most pleasurable lessons to teach (no mess!) and the kids relished the connection to nature and the freedom of process over product. This project could be modified for any age group, pre-K through 12th grade.
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This summer's Kids' Art Studio will be an Encore! of our Art Through the Decades summer camps. We will take our inspiration from the 1920's (Tuesday), 1960's (Wednesday), 1970's (Thursday), and the 1980's and 90's (Friday). Even though returning students may be familiar with the themes and artists of the decades, the projects will be new. Unlike summer camp, students may attend one day, all four, or anything in between.

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This spring in Art Academy for the 6-10 year olds, we explored artwork and artists that take their inspiration from botany and horticulture. Our students had the opportunity to learn directly from Payne County Master Gardener volunteers and participate in hands-on horticulture activities with fun, follow-up art projects, one of which was this gorgeous gelli plate printed collage inspired by one of the most famous artist-gardeners of all time, Claude Monet. This lesson could be adapted for any age group, K-12.
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