Camp Rocked!

Middle School Art Camp was the first week of summer, and we had a BLAST! Camp was open to any child entering 5th-8th grade this school year and I had a range of ages, which is one of the best parts about camp for me. The first day we created a clay project- teapots! Campers created clay coils and pressed them inside of plastic bowls to create the two halves of the pot. Eventually these two bowl forms were scored together to create an egg-like shape or the body of the teapot. Students hand-formed spouts by hollowing out a shaped piece of clay:

 I showed students how to "pull" a handle from a carrot shaped piece of clay. Here are the handles sitting out to get a little dry, in order to hold their shape. They were later trimmed and attached to the sides of the pot.

Thursday of that week, once the clay was bone dry from having sat in the sun for several days, students gently glazed the greenware pots. I fired them in the kiln overnight and the results were just lovely!

The big project for the rest of the week was painted chairs. Campers each brought in a chair (or other small furniture piece) from home. The first step was to sand the chairs to get the surface ready to accept paint. This was NOT the campers' favorite part :)

Once sanded, all chairs were coated with white gesso (a primer) so that the colors would be vibrant once painted. Students then went to work painting unique and whimsical designs. Every piece was so different and reflected the interests of the artist. They worked hard for several days to create the finished products!

Lower School Art Camp met the following week, and it was equally as fun! We did a variety of projects including painted pottery, paper mache, batik on muslin, solar prints, painted wooden bird feeders, paper mosaic boxes, tie dyed t-shirts and embossed tin mirrors. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures for almost all of it!!! Here are a few shots of the batiks being painted, and some of the jumbo paper mache letters (each camper did one of their initials):