Translating art into fun
By JESSICA KELLER - ARGUS OBSERVER
Thursday, June 14, 2007 2:18 PM PDT
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| Vale Art Camp volunteer Alia House paints the face of camper Amanda Trenkle, 8, Tuesday at Vale Elementary School. The camp, growing in size and popularity each year, is free and open to the public. The city and area business donate funds to keep the camp going. |
VALE - One group of children are back at school in Vale this week, channeling their inner Van Gogh or Picasso during the second annual Vale Art Camp.
The camp is both hard work and an act of love for Vale High School senior Melissa Bailey who organized this year’s gathering with Vale High School teacher Shannon Dobney.
Bailey, who volunteered at last year’s camp, said she aspires to be a school teacher and thought it would be a good senior project.
“And it’s just kind of there for the community because there’s not a lot to do in Vale,” Bailey said.
Because of the popularity of last year’s camp, this year the children had to pre-register to attend. Almost 150 children from kindergarten through sixth-grade are participating in this years’ camp. The kindergarten and first-graders spend their mornings at the Head Start building, while the second- through sixth-graders are at Vale Elementary School working on art projects at different stations.
“It’s a lot of time, but it’s good to see all these kids having fun,” Bailey said, who helps run the program for the 88 second- through sixth-graders. “It’s not as easy as I thought it would be, but it’s so fun.”
Bailey said a lot of time was put in pre-registering the children, recruiting volunteers, coming up with art project station ideas and purchasing supplies with the help of Dobney.
“Before it even started I had at least 20 hours in,” she said. Each day features different art projects the children complete before rotating to another station.
“It’s a lot of one-on-one time,” Bailey said, adding volunteers get to know some of the campers well by the end of the week. Bailey said the past few days the children have made everything from scrapbooks to purses and picture frames made of puzzle pieces, tie-dye socks to dot paintings of their names. On Monday the younger students got to go on a field trip with a local photographer to take photos of the town, while on Tuesday the older campers got to do the same.
“It’s fun,” Amanda Trenkel, 8, said of the camp while getting a multi-colored design painted on her face by volunteer Alia House, a high school student, at the face-painting station. “It’s really like crafty.”
Bailey said the most popular stations have been tie-dying and the ones involving paint.
Dobney said for Bailey, the camp has taught her some of the tools necessary in teaching, while helping her complete the project portion of her senior project. For the high school students helping out, Dobney said, it gives them a chance to volunteer and give back to the community, which is the underlying goal of the camp.
The best thing, Dobney said, is the camp is free, which is nice for children whose parents might not otherwise be able to send them to a summer camp.
The camp, Dobney said, is funded through donations from the city and businesses in town. Last year the camp had 105 children attend and has grown even larger this year. The camp, Dobney said, is a wonderful opportunity for the children.
“So it gives them a look at all different types of art and allows them to be exposed to different types of cultures and art, and that’s something that I think is essential for them growing up,” Dobney said.
No Dhimmi wrote on Aug 14, 2009 9:38 PM:
And this isn't "racist," because Islam is not a race, anymore than Communism or Nazism are races, both of which killed far fewer people than Islam.
Disgusting. "