CCArts Blog

Register now for Fall Classes that begin September 19 at the Center for the Creative Arts (CCArts)!  Explore visual and performing arts opportunities for youth and adults, from short workshops to intensive ten-week classes taught by professional teaching artists. These include drawing and painting, pottery, sculpture, photography, jewelry-making, mosaics, stained glass and fused glass, printmaking and Children’s Theater. Private instruction is available in Fine Art, Dance, Pottery and a variety of musical instruments. Express yourself; try something new or polish your artistic talents.

“First Time Artists” can learn to paint in watercolor, acrylics or oils, create hand built or wheel thrown pottery and learn to use their digital camera. Classes are designed for beginning adult students to explore and gain confidence in each medium.

CCArts is expanding Pottery offerings this fall with daytime and evening adult opportunities. Youth pottery classes include a daytime class for home schooled students, Thursdays after school and Saturday mornings as part of the SMArts (Saturday Morning Arts for Kids) program.

Students at CCArts also enjoy making creative community connections. Painters will meet at the Hagley House and Gardens for a fall tour and photo shoot followed by inspired paintings in the studio with painter Diana Heitzman. Photographers will explore Kennett Square in a Documentary Photography Workshop with professional photographer Kathleen Buckalew. See www.ccarts.org for details about these and more opportunities.

Children’s Theater at CCArts presents “The Little Match Girl”, an upbeat twist on the traditional tale. Placement auditions and weekly rehearsals begin Saturday, September 24, 10:30am-12:30pm. Parents should plan to stay for the first half hour. Young actors will stay for the full 2 hour rehearsal. The performance will be Saturday, December 10 at 2pm. Tickets are $5.

Online registration is easy at www.ccarts.org. For additional information or to register for classes by phone call 302-239-2434 or stop in at 410 Upper Snuff Mill Row, Yorklyn, DE. CCArts is also available for birthday parties, special events, studio rentals and customized arts experiences. The Center for the Creative Arts is the place for you to “Find the Artist Within”. Check class listings for specific dates and times and take advantage of the opportunity to explore your creative side!

Our teachers this week learned a few lessons, just like the campers have. We have some eager campers, who like to plan projects, and plays … and since we foster and encourage inspiration, we allow it! So during Acting for the Camera camp, we had a camper who was to be Dorothy in a production. She was eager to bring in her “Toy Dog” from home….do you know where I am going with this? Well she asked her mom to stay the next day to take her toy dog home..so I was approached asking how long the mom should stay. I surprisingly asked why her toy dog couldn’t stay the entire class. To my surprise…I was told it was a Toy Poodle…the teacher and I were shocked, since the intention was to bring in a Toy Stuffed Animal.

Lesson: be specific when asking a camper to bring something from home! They may have a different interpretation of the object.

Not to worry we were able to borrow a Toto from American Girls camp so that Dorothy could act out the scene with her dog, the stuffed kind!

Miss Kristen instructs All About Paint campers

If CCArts walls could talk…what would they say? This week they would say, its camp time! We have campers taking classes called Buildings and Builders, All About Paint, Creative Critters or Metalworking 101 and many more. As I walk around the campers are so excited to show me what they are working on, and are already on Monday proud of their progress. In All About Paint their inspiration today is Monet and Miss Kristen teaches her lesson about acrylic paints and how to make textures.  While down the hall 4th-6th graders learn from Miss Jen about Buildings and Builders and think about what types of things they can make with card board, corks and glue. Some students were making chairs, while others objects, but two girls teamed up and began to make a hotel! Below you see a picture of their fountain in the lobby!

Hotel Lobby Fountain

So if the walls could talk, they would say “I see boys and girls having tons of fun, while making art, to show and share with everyone” We hope you join us sometime this summer to make something of your own, or even just to visit. Every friday at 10:45am and 2:15pm, the whole

Last week we offered an ARTScetera class for ages 7th-9th grade. The class was titled Rock n Roll Band Camp, with musician, Tony Mowen as the instructor. Monday the kids got to pick what songs they might want to work on during the week. With Tony’s help they were able to come up with “takin care of business” as one of their selections. The kids and Tony worked hard all week to come up with a great “Rock Performance” for Friday afternoon.

Check out the video!

So last Friday was a very eventful day. It started off smoothly till a camper from Kristens Monster Madness class came into the office with this slimy cakky white stuff all on the top of her hair. I said to the camper, “omg…what is that?” and the camper responded “Glue!” Most kids get gum stuck in their hair…but only at Art camp does a child get glue stuck in their hair. You got to love it!

Well its Wednesday, and camp is in full swing! I must say we have to be doing something super right, because Monday a mom came in to register her daughter for an afternoon class! I asked the mom, wasn’t her child just here for the am session? She replys “yes, but when we got in the car, she was quite angry with me that I was only letting her take the morning camp, she insisted I take her to McDonalds for lunch, and bring her right back. She was sure Miss Kristen would let her into her afternoon Monster camp!” Well we did find a camp for her, but not Miss Kristen’s as Monster camp is next week, this week Miss Kristen is teaching Fine Art Drawing to middle school students as part of our ARTScetera program!

Check out our programs here or feel free to stop by!

Miss Marla, Mr Steve and I will post blogs as often as we can about camp, so be sure to check back! (there are others posting about CCArts happenings and local events)

Miss Becky

Camp Director Miss Becky and Assistant Camp Directors Miss Marla & Mr Steve

Please check out the lovely display of watercolors, done by residents of Kennett Friends Home as part of a CCArts Outreach program. I’ve had the delightful experience of teaching classes there for just over a year. They are a talented bunch!

The display is set up at the “Paper Market” @ 103 W. State St., right in the heart of Kennett Square. Go for the First Friday art stroll tomorrow and see a lot more!

It’s been a busy spring!

One of the special needs groups I teach at Cecil College in Elkton, Maryland, put on a play (I wrote & directed and they performed like pros!) and it went off splendidly. That’s it until September.

I judged a contest category for the Philadelphia Writers’ Conference and my poet-husband and I are off to the Conference this weekend (with time in between for our pets).

I’m between semesters in my MFA program at Goddard College in Vermont. I’m 25% done with my MFA in Creative Writing with good “marks” from my advisor so far…My next semester starts in three weeks.

Other news: we had a successful show in Bellefonte for the Third Annual Bellefonte Arts Festival.

And, finally, I was accepted into the AROHO (A Room of Her Own) 2011 retreat (about 80 women writers selected out of over 1,000) so I’m excited about heading to Ghost Ranch in New Mexico to write and paint. I’m giving a workshop there called “Watercolor Words for a Waterless World.” Check out the AROHO website to learn about some wonderful, creative women!

That’s about it for now.

Hope everyone is enjoying the slightly cooler temperatures after the brutal start to June!

Lisa

I can barely believe we have less than 10 weeks until our Summer

Umpa-Lumpa

Arts to Grow On (SAGO) camp begins.  I am proud to say this will be my ninth summer camp at CCArts.

In 9 weeks and 4 days, our hallways and classrooms will be filled with lots of little eager artists, and their wonderful instructors. The staff can sit back, and await the next band-aid, tears or frantic call from mom’s needing an extra 15 mins of after-care. While the teachers and camp staff, make sure all the campers have fun, create wonderful projects like the Umpa-Lumpa’s above from Miss Jen’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory camp last year. Then on Friday we can all gather for the Friday Fun Finale and see what work was created that week, and which play Miss Rachel has to show us!   Be sure your camper knows all 3; Miss Becky, Miss Marla and Mr Steve are all back and ready to see them again!

Rock n Roll Band Camp 2010

If you have a Middle Schooler, be sure to show them our new ARTScetera program we made just for them. Fine arts, for great kids, taught by professional artists. They can now get the extra experience they have been waiting for, things like Pop Art, Art Comes Alive, Rock and Roll Jam Camp and Pottery on the Wheel…just to name a few. Some are 2 weeks and some are 1, but we promise, you’ll have fun!

In 20 weeks, we will start our countdown for next summer, and start to get sad to say good-bye to our friends we made over the

Three new friends in 2010 you could hear singing "Best Buds, Best Buds" through CCArts halls for weeks!

summer months. But be sure you get your summer campers registered before its too late, and their favorite is full. So far we have openings, but remember BEFORE May 1st, you get a discount, not on or after! I eagerly count down the 9 weeks and 4 days until I get to see your children blossom into their artist within.

Miss Becky

In 1991 I found a little thing in the phone book. I was looking for an art center that was close to my relatively new location; Kennett Square. I went in and met with Marilyn Proctor with my watercolors. At that time she didn’t need any more watercolor teachers so she said, “What else do you do?”

I was a published poet and an architectural designer. We floated the idea of a writing class and, in 1992, it took off. I’ve been teaching a variation of “Can I Write?” ever since. I’ve also taught watercolor and interior design over the years at CCArts, all the while living between jobs, careers and even meeting the man I would later marry in the Purple studio (appropriate, eh?)

It’s a place I brought my children, in the original after-school arts program. I taught workshops in that, too.

CCArts has been a sort of home base for me for nearly twenty years. I’m proud to be a part of such an enriching organization. It has enriched my life to teach there; every class is a thrilling, new experience.

My years as an instructor helped me to realize that I need to keep reaching higher with my ability to teach. I am currently a graduate student in the low-residency program at Goddard College, going for my MFA in creative writing. Add that to my BFA in painting, my BA in art history, 22 years in corporate architecture (corporate world now behind me) and several years doing residential interiors and you find me: just a creative human being, happy to share her passion for the arts.

Thanks, CCArts and thank you to all of my students who continue to teach me more than they can ever know.

February Thaw Brandywine Valley

It’s amazing how every spring feels so new and magical. If you watch for it, if you’re open to it, you see, hear, feel and smell so much more.

Writing poetry, painting, these things have enabled me to see the world, to see the life around me so much more deeply.

Try it.