The Coleman Center for the Arts was pleased to offer CAMP PLAY, an annual summer camp for 8 to 18 year olds. Imagination, creativity, and collaborative fun served as inspiration in this year’s theme. Instructors offered lessons and projects in visual art, performance, dance, and writing.
Visiting artist Tameka Norris worked with students to represent and transform themselves through photography. Riffing on the art assignment that Norris did for PBS television, Become Someone Else, students learned about the difference between sympathy, empathy and admiration and identified various people who made them feel these emotions. Students then posed for a self-portrait before transforming themselves into a character that they admire, sympathize or empathize with. Students learned about relevant art historical precedents including Cindy Sherman and Adrian Piper, in addition to Norris’s own work.
Darius Hill used his own work as a starting point to ask students to consider identity in mixed media collages. Students used their identity as inspiration to make symbols that represent themselves, playfully combining popsicle sticks and marker drawings that bring to mind super hero symbols. In a collaborative sculpture installation, the students then transformed chicken wire and colored wire casings into individual pieces that later hung together on the gallery wall.
York native Gary James returned to his hometown to teach students games, chants and exercises that used fun to explore collaboration, teamwork, and personal and collective power. “P-O-W-E-R! We got the Power!” and “I love being black!” echoed about the Coleman Center throughout the week. These exercises grounded the students and their additional performances in a place of empowerment in the final performance, including the recitation of the poem InLak’ech / I Am You or You Are Me.
Returning dance instructor Terry Hayes taught younger students the infectious Whip/Nae Nae dance currently sweeping the nation, while the older students used some of the same moves in the whip. Kanita Sturdivant also used dancing in her singing numbers. Younger students performed the Monkey Man song by the specials, while older students did a song and dance rendition of Bruno Mars’ Uptown Funk by the Kidz Bop Kidz. The students performed their pieces in the final exhibition in front of family, friends, and community members. A good time was had by all.
Camp PLAY was made possible by the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the Black Belt Community Foundation. Thanks to LaToya Witherspoon for serving as Camp Counselor!