Visual Arts 2012

Clay with Ann Judy

Cigar Box Guitars with Aaron Smith

3D Design Bugs with Keith Wilde, Skip French, Susanna Kennedy, Kate Laissle

Acrylics and Painting with Terry Fortkamp

2012 Camp in Review

CIRCLE ROUND THE SQUARE 2012

Circle is based on our four principles: Learn, Create, Accomplish, and Be Recognized. Our Students are engaged in arts learning, create new works, complete and accomplish a project, and then are recognized at the art exhibit we provide them at the end of the year.

Programming employs our intensive rotation model, which provides exposure to multiple aesthetics in classes taught by 12 professional artists. Much like language immersion, students are exposed to language principles and the culture of art, every day for five weeks. Projects span a wide array of media and are designed to be age appropriate. Though students are challenged, they are all always successful at completion. Our studio arts classes are taught to ODE Visual Arts Standards, and projects are chosen to help students increase their identity. For instance this year in ceramics, the rattleheads were self-portraits, and the crown on top spoke of what was inside the head of the participants. In our performing arts collaborative, students are also given choices in how to achieve creative assignments. There is never a right or wrong answer, which is part of our success at sharpening creative problem solving-skills. This also increases the amazing buy-in we experience from the students themselves.

SUMMARY: Circle Round the Square, now having completed its eight year, provided 60 Nelsonville children grades 5-12, a free-of-charge summer arts and wellness enrichment program, Monday-Fridays, June 18-July18 from 8:30 a.m.- 4 p.m. Programming was held in the following locations:

• The First Presbyterian Church in Nelsonville (breakfast, lunch, cooking class, garden and Friday night family dinners provided by Good Earth Farms);
• The Fayette Street High School (visual and performing arts collaborative classes and snacks);
• The Hocking College Fitness Center (swimming, climbing wall, tennis, basketball/dodge ball, volleyball, dance, ping pong etc) and;
• The Nelsonville City Pool.

Transportation and meals were provided daily. Friday afternoons were reserved for day trips.
An exhibition featuring the work created in the studios was held on July 27, during the Final Friday art walk on July 27 and attended by 200 family, community members and regional visitors

SCHEDULE OVERVIEW

• 830-900 Breakfast. at the church
• 9-1040: Art Class One at the school
• 10:40-10:45: Snacks
• 10:45-12:25 Art Class Two at the school
• 12:30-1:00 Lunch at church
• 1:00  4 p.m. Hocking College, City Pool or out-of-town Day Trips
• 4 p.m. dismissal

Weekly 1:00-4 p.m Schedule

• Monday, Tuesday Thursdays - Hocking Fitness Center
• Wed - City Pool (unless it rains, then back to Fitness)
• Friday Field/Day Trips
• Friday Family DINNERS - 5 pm at the church

Friday dinner was provided by Good Earth Farms in an effort to promote their farm to table initiative.

Field Trip Schedule:
June 22: Dairy Barn and Kennedy Museum. Graphic Art Exhibit, and Butterfly and Costume Art Exhibit.

We had a great day our first time out. Dairy Barn Director Jane Redfern was our docent. The Dairy Barn provided an activity so our kids could make their own graphic arts novel. Most of our kids had never been to the Dairy Barn or Kennedy Museum where we went next. Sha Sha Higsby’s costumes were on display as was the community based exhibit, Butterflies. Our kids enjoyed making origami butterflies, and especially appreciated the found object art we saw there.

June 29-Afternoon concert at Stuart’s Opera House with New Orleans-based Brass Band

What an afternoon to remember. Our kids are so appreciative, and were enthralled by the music of the brass. The band took lots of time to tell us about how they came about, what they do, and all about the music they played. Our kids and staff were rocking out!

July 13: WOUB Television and Radio Tour and Balloon Art in The College of Art at Ohio University
Our students were taken on an hour long tour of the Radio and Television studios at WOUB, where they saw professional studios and technicians at work. Then they switched and went to the School of Art
where we had a class in balloon art! The kids had a ball as you can see by the pictures.

July 18: COSI. The kids were treated to a whole day at COSI, Columbus’ premier children's science museum.

July 27 ART OPENING and FILM Gala at Stuarts Opera House.  6 p.m-9 p.m.

ARTS Based CLASSES:

Arts and Enrichment ClassesClasses rotated weekly
DESIGN- Cigar Box Guitars with Aaron Smith
CERAMICS- Musical (self-portraiture) Rattleheads with Ann Judy
PAINTING- Interior and Exterior Perspectives with Terry Fortkamp
COOKING BY COLOR- Food and gardening with Wendy and Shelby Kaho

Performing Arts Collaborative ClassesClasses did not rotate
The objective of this summer’s performing arts collaborative was to create Public Service Announcements that will be aired on television.ACTING- Laura Fergeson,-Production Director
FILM with Pradeep Essuvaya and Shi Shi
Galen Mullins, Mehri Davis and Carly Soultagger
MOVEMENT with Erin Phaf
COSTUMES, SETS, PROPS, MASKS with Keith Wilde, Kate Laissle, Skip French, Susanna Kennedy

Hocking College Fitness Center Activities (all offered daily)

• Climbing Wall
• Swimming and Diving
• Basketball and Volleyball
• Tennis and Ping Pong
• Dance Dance Revolution
• Walking Fitness Track

Friday Night Dinners

This year The Good Earth Farms in Athens, as part of their farm-to-table initiative, provided our staff, participants and their families a free meal after our daily programming ended on Friday at 5 p.m. Pastor Pete took the kids under his wing for an hour and played lots of fun games with them in the yard, while we waited for the meal and families to show up.

Cooking and Gardening 2012

This is the third year food bloggers and freelance food writers, Shelby and Wendy Kaho, led the cooking class. The class centered on a beautiful kitchen garden created by local artist, Margaret Gustafan. The theme for cooking classes this year was healthy snacking. The class was responsible for preparing snacks for the program each day using whole grains and incorporating herbs and vegetables from our kitchen garden. They relied on muffin tins for many of the recipes to prepare bite-sized, easy to eat snacks that packed a lot of nutrition into a small package. 

Each class also got a day where they could decide what to make. There was a Mexican buffet with homemade salsa and guacamole on soft tacos with meat and marinated chicken. One class chose a chocolate day with black bean and gluten-free brownies paired with fruit dipped in chocolate and another chose a breakfast menu with omelets filled with garden produce and herbs along with chocolate spelt pancakes.  Every week the class made pickles and pickled vegetables to use up the leftover veggies from lunch and the cucumbers that were growing in the kitchen garden. They picked dill and onions from the garden to include in their refrigerator pickles. The kids ate 20 jars of pickles with their lunches over  four weeks. They made hundreds of vegetable cakes and Broccoli Potato Cheddar Puffs, Pizza Puffs and corn muffins with local grains, homemade cereal bars with oats, breakfast cookies and granola. There were fruit tarts and fruit smoothies and even kale chips made with the abundant kale crop. 

The teaching staff was delighted when served vegetable pizzas for a staff meeting made by the enthusiastic catering team in our cooking classes. The students were so intrigued with the vegetable pizzas they made for the staff that they made some for snack the next week and every slice topped with kale, tomatoes and zucchini and basil from our garden and the extra carrots and broccoli left from lunches was eaten by the kids. With the help of the entire staff a culture of fruit and vegetable eating was created where the students tried new foods and were introduced to vegetables in new ways. 

Each morning they were encouraged to try fresh fruit with their breakfasts and were offered pineapples, bananas, berries, melon oranges, apples or grapes. The watering and weeding of the garden and then the harvesting of the vegetables to create snacks were a part of every week and increased the willingness of the students to try new vegetables or learn to like vegetables they were sure they would never eat. To encourage the children to continue cooking at home with parents, a cookbook of recipes used this summer was created and they added comments and illustrations for their favorite recipes.