Magic, creativity and fun are flowing through the studio!

This summer flew by so quickly!

The students, our guest teacher and I all had a blast with the creative camps!

Students at our Magical Creatures Camps dreamed of magical creatures all week long and built homes for their special creatures. I was so happy to see the creativity that building a home/environment for their creature inspired. Everyone had their favorite creatures before camp but found new ones to love by the end of camp. Stories were written about their creatures’ homes and underwater volcanoes were built, as were molten lava cores. Little caves were created, so that their Magical Creatures had a place to rest, as were cool trap doors and magical slides! We sewed, painted, wrote, sculpted and drew magical creatures all week! It was so great to see how the students inspired each other too – that’s when you know that creativity is flowing like magic all around.

Creating homes for our dragons from recycled materials.

Fascinated by stories of fantastical beasts!

At our Magical Treasures Creative Camps, we learned about heroes and bravery, about treasures precious, magical and intangible. We made our own chalices inspired by King Arthur and the Holy Grail, created our own Zuni Fetishes inspired by the sacred relationship between Nature and the American Indians. We made our magical wands that could “rainbow anything” or create flowers and built our very own story chests to inspire us to keep telling and creating great stories.

Story chests as creative and individual as the young artists who painted them.

Taking turns to tell stories with our Story Chests.

We loved the stories that grew from creating our own magical trees, from a tree where stars went to rest when they were tired of shining in our night skies to a tree where time went when it was bored to a lovely tree filled with vanilla gumdrops of snow. Everyone loved creating their own little Zuni animal totems that represented a trait they wanted – like being gentle, or brave or strong.

Young artists at work on their mixed media tree paintings.

Paintings drying, waiting for the next steps….

All in all, it made for a wonderful summer of creativity and art and I loved the pride on each young artist’s face when they got to showcase their works in a final exhibition!