Chess Camp has just FLOWN by this week. The kids were so much fun this time around. A little bit younger than previous years… so it took me a little time acclimate. Their skill sets & attention-to-detail may not have been quite up to where their enthusiasm & energy wanted them to be. But it’s that “crude”  and adorable rawness to them that make each set so adorable!!!

We spent most of the day painting all of the pieces with colored underglazes. They will be glazed with clear glaze over the weekend by the studio monitors. A couple kids had a few last pieces to make… and a few others also found that they needed to make some “replacement” pieces as their originals broke during the painting process. It was a tough lesson to learn that scoring & slipping DOES indeed matter… and if you don’t to it well, your chess character’s head might just fall off!!!

So here are some of the chess sets at the end of the day. Painted and lined up… double-checking that they have all of the pieces they need to make a full set. Each one cuter than the next. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a photo of every set… but here’s a few of them…

So now they’re all done. The campers have had a VERY productive five days. So much fun playing with these talented kids. while they created these little “masterpieces.” Over the weekend, they will all get glazed with clear glaze and go into an electric kiln. The kids will need to come back in a few days to pick up their chess sets.

 

The goal for today was to “finish” building all of their chess pieces so that we can paint them with underglaze tomorrow. Most of the kids made it. A couple of them need to finish a couple more tomorrow morning. Deadline’s approaching… so tomorrow’s going to be a BUSY day!!!

It’s been a productive week so far at Summer Camp. My kids are each busy building a full chess set out of terra cotta clay. They’ve each developed their own themes and are building it piece by piece. But camp is not just clay… it’s also about cleaning and every other part of the process!

And for my camps, there are three simple rules…

Summer Camp Rule #1 : “Have fun.”
And it definitely looks like they are. You can see it on their faces, and in their work!

Summer Camp Rule #2 : “Your fun is not more important than anyone else’s fun.”
So there’s no teasing, nicknaming, bullying, acting up or anything else.

Score… slip… repeat.
Hopefully they’ve all learned some good handbuilding skills.
They’ll find out soon enough what happens as they dry if they have NOT scored & slipped!!!

They also needed to start painting their chess boards. Each chess board is 24″x 24″… which means each piece sits on a checkered section that is 3″ square.

Like I said… camp is not just about MAKING things, but also the other steps of the process. A tough lesson is reclaiming their dried clay. I keep telling them to watch out so their clay doesn’t dry too fast. To keep it covered with plastic and spray it once and awhile with water.  However, some of them don’t hear that warning… and we end up with some dry chunks of clay. So they then get to “volunteer” to pulverize the dry clay so we can reclaim it into useful slip. A little hard work might reinforce the lesson of “preserving” their wet usable clay.

At the end of the day, we clean up our class room. They kids are great about scraping & scrubbing the tables, sweeping the floor, cleaning all of their tools and making the room cleaner than it was when they came in for the morning.

Throughout the day, I also get to “enforce” my favorite of the rules…
Summer Camp Rule #3 : “Whatever mess you make, YOU will be cleaning up.”
So when there’s a mess on the floor by the sinks, the kids “volunteer” to be the ones to clean it up. They know the rules… and it’s all part of the process!

Today my Summer Camps kicked it in gear and finished their sculptures. We worked on painting final details and adding metallic accents. A Hershey’s Kiss just isn’t a Kiss without an aluminum foil wrapper, right?!

And here they are… our finished sculptures ready for their Gallery showing!!! I wish…

Baseball Hat & Baseball Bat – by Samara

Frozen Yogurt Cup – by Cecilia

Rainbow Coca-Cola Can – by Stella

Hershey’s Kiss – by Greta

Converse Hightop Shoe & Basketball – by Hannah

Bowl of Cheerios – by Dierdre

Starburst Fruit Chews – by Isabel

No. 2 Pencil – by Nicole

Hershey’s Chocolate Bar – by Rebecca

Starbuck’s Iced Coffee – by Isabella

Traditional Parking Meter – by Isaac

Dr. Who Dalek – by Sophie… or at least that’s what she “told me” it was?!!!

Sophie also made this Dr. Who Tardis… at least I recognized THIS one.

Hershey’s Kiss – by Natalie... and I especially LOVE the mis-spelling!

Movie Popcorn – by Audrey

Green Gummi Bear – by Ainslie

Converse Hightop – by Emma

And there it is… the end of our “Pop Art Sculptures” Summer Camp…
as well as the end of my “Tour of Duty” as this was my last Camp for the Summer!

Today my Summer Camp kids started painting their “Pop Art Sculptures”… in addition to memorizing their 23 Pop Artists.  The white plaster will be covered with acrylic paints as the campers bring their sculptures to life with acrylic colors.

Okay, so some of the kids had more fun painting their hands than their sculptures!!!

By the end of the day, my Summer Campers had pretty much finished up their “Pop Art Sculpture” construction. A lot of work & a lot of plaster gauze. They’re now drying overnight… for tomorrow we start painting.

 

Yesterday we worked to make sense out of those piles of cardboard & newspaper. My Summer Campers worked hard to pull their designs together and make their sculptures a reality. Yesterday we worked with the cardboard as armature, newspaper as filler and masking tape to hold everything together… a LOT of masking tape!!!

A lot of projects. A lot of sculpture. A lot of kids… in NOT a lot of space!!!

Today we switched to plaster gauze to cover the “armature” and give it a “skin.” Small sheets of plaster gauze are dunked in water, then placed on their pieces and rubbed into place. As the plaster dissolves, it fills the holes in the gauze. Sheet after sheet. Rubbing & smoothing all the way to cover their sculptures.

So much fun for the kids to see their sculptures come together. Their sculptures are starting to “look like something” and they’re all starting to see their visions come together.

Tomorrow we start painting the details…
as the plaster gauze will have dried & solidified overnight.

This week at Summer camp, my kids will be making their own “Pop Art” Sculptures.
However, my “mission” this week is to sneak in some Art History along the way.
So over the course of the week we’re going to talk a lot about Pop Art, and many of the “famous” Pop Artists along the way. We’ll discuss their styles, influences and what makes them unique from each other. By the end of the week I’m pretty confident that they will be able to recognize the following twenty-three Pop Artists.

How many of these Pop Artists can YOU identify?… no cheating…

So let’s start with an easy one… and now the answers have been added 8/21/14.

Pop Artist #1 : ______________    … ANSWER? : Andy Warhol

 

Pop Artist #2 : ______________    … ANSWER? : Jasper Johns

 

Pop Artist #3 : ______________    … ANSWER? : Erro

 

Pop Artist #4 : ______________    … ANSWER? : Peter Max

 

Pop Artist #5 : ______________    … ANSWER? : Alex Katz

 

Pop Artist #6 : ______________    … ANSWER? : David Hockney

 

Pop Artist #7 : ______________    … ANSWER? : Allan D’Archangelo

 

Pop Artist #8 : ______________    … ANSWER? : Robert Indiana

 

Pop Artist #9 : ______________    … ANSWER? : Claes Oldenburg

 

Pop Artist #10 : ______________    … ANSWER? : Joe Tilson

 

Pop Artist #11 : ______________    … ANSWER? : Keith Haring

 

Pop Artist #12 : ______________    … ANSWER? : Nicholas Krushenick

 

Pop Artist #13 : ______________    … ANSWER? : George Segal

 

Pop Artist #14 : ______________    … ANSWER? : Patrick Caulfield

 

Pop Artist #15 : ______________    … ANSWER? : Peter Blake

 

Pop Artist #16 : ______________    … ANSWER? : Gerhard Richter

 

Pop Artist #17 : ______________    … ANSWER? : Jeff Koons

 

Pop Artist #18 : ______________    … ANSWER? : Jean Dubuffet

 

Pop Artist #19 : ______________    … ANSWER? : Richard Hamilton

 

Pop Artist #20 : ______________    … ANSWER? : Roy Lichtenstein

 

Pop Artist #21 : ______________    … ANSWER? : Robert Rauschenberg

 

Pop Artist #22 : ______________    … ANSWER? : Wayne Thiebaud

 

Pop Artist #23 : ______________    … ANSWER? : Sylvie Fleury

So, how did YOU do with this little “Pop Quiz”???
Betcha my Summer Campers will have them ALL by end of camp on Friday!!!

 

Today was Day One of my new week at Summer Camp.
I’ve got a whole new batch of fresh faces… sixteen new kids to play with
and maybe teach a thing or two to this week?!

This week’s theme is “Pop Art Sculptures.”
So these piles of cardboard & newspapers may just look like a mess now,
but by the end of the week I’m confident the kids will transform the “mess”
into some great sculptures!!! More to come…

During our FEAST potluck lunch, another metals camp instructor stopped by to join in the fun. And she was promptly challenged to squeeze ten Takis atomic, flaming hot chips in her mouth. Susan tried… and tried… and squeezed… and squeezed… all the time knowing that the atomic fire flavoring would kick in soon!!!

Susan got them all in her mouth, but couldn’t actually eat them. She couldn’t crunch down without losing half of them. So she claimed a “technicality” and said that “eating them” was never part of the original challenge. Whatever?! She was still feeling the burn well after she spit them out… and the kids were still quite amused. Mission accomplished.