Exploring beyond our Shells

Laura's Center for the Arts kicked off our summer camp season with "Explore the Arts" camp.  This camp allowed campers the freedom to choose between a performance workshop, working on Green Eggs and Ham from Seussical, learning several ways to make a monster from Beth Gilmore, or learning how we design and paint our sets for our upcoming theatre camp productions.  In addition to their normal classes we took two days to bring in professional artists to run workshops with the campers. 

Tuesday we had the incomparable Maggie MaClellan, a local artist, working on papier-mâché with the kids.  She brought in pre-made turtle shells, created using recycled newspaper and masking tape, and taught the campers her process of sculpting the newspaper and wrapping it in the tape, creating the arms, legs, tail, and head.  They then covered the turtle forms in paper we had decorated earlier in the morning.  Even the most squeemish campers eventually got used to "the goo" and we ended up with a menagerie of turtles, some looking like they had been hit  by a graffiti artist, and some modeled after Maggie's own creation, wrapped in old bits of map. 

Turtles created by the campers!

On Thursday we were visited by Brent Beissel from the Bosse School of Music.  Brent spent a few hours teaching the basics of rhythmic notation with the campers.  He gave them all a chance to experience different types of drums, shakers, bangers, and things that go bump in the orchestra! The campers left that day knowing a lot more about how to count their Tas and TiTis than most adults!!
 

More information about Maggie and her works can found here

More information about the Bosse School of Music can be found here