PORT TOWNSEND — Have you ever wanted to write a song that expresses your ideas? Create a chapbook that holds a collection of your own poems? Learn to paint without fear of making mistakes? Make a wearable sculpture that reveals your inner spirit?
Think out of the box.
Out of the Box is a new summer day camp for young people that is filling the void left by the closure of Kaleidoscope arts camp and curtailment of arts in other summer programs.
Tap creative energy
Sponsored by Jefferson Community School, Out of the Box is designed to take untapped creative energy and channel it into something tangible.
“We want to provide an experience that gives participants enough time to complete a finished project,” said Julie Marston, a gifted education teacher directing the camp.
“Taking creativity and accomplishing something, rather than just dabbling, is one of our goals.”
Designed for students in grades 4 and up, the camp begins Monday and will run through July 17. It is divided into morning and afternoon sessions of three hours each.
Participants choose two of the four workshops — song writing, painting, reed sculpture and writing/chapbooks — each taught by professionals in their field.
“We have an extraordinary faculty,” Marston said.
Painting, writing
Jesse Joshua Watson, who teaches painting, did the illustrations for a new picture-book biography of Bob Marley, I and I, written byTony Medina.
Watson also did the illustrations for the best-selling Hank Zipper book series and the Black Dinosaurs series. Students in his art workshop will be creating paintings using a technique Watson uses for illustrations.
“First you draw with ink, then fill it in with acrylic,” he said. “It’s very forgiving, because you can paint over the ink.”
Watson is coordinating his workshop with the writing/chapbook workshop led by Gary Lilley, a Copper Canyon poet whose latest book, Alpha Zulu is receiving national attention.
Lilley’s students will be going on “walk-arounds” to gather material for writing that has a sense of place, he said.
“I want to move them to do a unit of work and create a chapbook of 10 to 12 pages or so,” Lilley said. “We will be working in collage as well. This is about image.”
Songs, wearable sculpture
Cliff Self, a songwriter who plays the guitar and violin, will lead the song-writing workshop, which focuses on using the works of John Lennon and Paul McCartney as models.
The wearable sculpture workshop is led by Thaddeus Jurczynski, a celebration artist who creates giant puppets for festivals throughout the Northwest and in Asia.
For the workshops, students use reeds and paper to create a sculpture that can be wearable.
“We start out with this rounded cube that gives you a basic building block to work from,” Jurczynski said.
It was Jurczynski who suggested that Jefferson Community School sponsor an arts camp after he learned that Kaleidoscope, which offered a summer arts camp for 10 years, was no longer operating due to financial constraints.
With the closure of Mountain View School, the YMCA’s summer day camp program also has cut back the variety of arts sessions it offers, Jurczynski said.
Both he and Watson taught at Kaleidoscope, which Marston helped start as a member of the organizing committee.
Marston is also a founder of Jefferson Community School, a sixth- through 12th-grade school that offers small-group, multi-age classes. One of the school’s goals is to serve as a learning center for the community outside of school hours, Marston said.
“We’re hoping to offer an Out of the Box after-school program, with one week each of dance, visual arts, performing arts and music,” Marston said.
“This is the seed of that.”
Gallery Walks
The school’s downtown location, in the Good Templars Building on the corner of Washington and Quincy, makes it easy for participants in the after-school program to exhibit work or perform as part of the monthly Gallery Walks.
Watson, who teaches at the school, is holding a book-release party for the Bob Marley biography at the school during Gallery Walk on Aug. 1.
Students at the summer arts camp will show what they have created at an open house Friday, July 17, at 3:30 p.m., to which the public is invited.
Expressing creativity by making something goes beyond having a souvenir of summer camp.
“As an artist, I treasure what I am able to get out in the world,” Watson said, “because we’re only here for a short time, and then poof, we’re gone.”
Tuition for Out of the Box Arts Camp, 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. July 13 through 17, is $200. To register, phone 360-385-0622.
For more information about the school, go to jeffersoncommunityschool.blogspot.com.
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Port Townsend/Jefferson County reporter-columnist Jennifer Jackson can be reached at jjackson@olypen.com.
