August 8-14, 2010
Fort Worden State Park
Port Townsend, Washington
Take a whole week this summer to dive in to art. At Centrum’s High School Summer Arts Camp, your days are filled with an intense focus on the genre of your choice. This summer choose from photography, installation art, musical theater and poetry - and go for it. The Centrum experience is about actively learning techniques and habits of mind used by professionals. Be challenged to use your ideas and make major leaps in your creative work.
“The teachers are all amazing, the food is great, I like the scheduling of classes and free time is well-balanced. CLASSES ARE EXCELLENT!~2009 Summer High School Student
The artists coming to teach at Centrum come from all over the country: a visual artist from Seattle, theater artists from New York, a photographer from Serbia who now makes her home in Nashville, and a poet from North Carolina. What these artists have in common is an interest in sharing their experience and knowledge. They help the next generation hone its skills and tell its own stories through art.
“Amazing instruction, intense preparation, powerful performances,
incredible friendships…one AMAZING week.”
~2009 Summer High School Student
Each day includes morning and afternoon studio sessions with plenty of time for meals and exploring Fort Worden. Each evening, the core artist faculty show and talk about the work they do; these presentations are followed by snacks and hang-out time in the dorm. And at the end of the week, there’s a showcase to share creative experiments with new and old friends and family.
The all-inclusive price for tuition, room and board is $695. Scholarships are available.
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The Workshops Photographic Storytelling
Vesna Pavlovic
Using photographic assignments to explore Centrum’s site at Fort Worden State Park, you will engage in the process of capturing moments in time. Learn about the basics of composition and visual storytelling through images and text. Class discussion and daily slide presentations of master photographic works will sharpen vision and critique. Learn about the importance images have in our culture and society.
Bring any camera you might have, whether it is film or digital. You will be using a scanner and computer to create collages and learn the basics of Photoshop.
Workin' the Poem
Gary LilleyGary Copeland Lilley offers a workshop to put more muscle and music into your poetry in a fun, craft-focused environment. Bring your original poems that need first aid, or even life support, and bring them fully to life. Poems often start life as a skeleton with beauty and potential. Give them more more authority, creative tension, and dynamic energy by developing layers of “vitals.” Expect an atmosphere of rhythm and rhyme, with music playing to help your poetic lines stand on their own and dance to satisfying conclusions.
Site-specific Installation and Eco-Art: Speaking Your Mind through “Craftivism”
Mandy GreerWith artist Mandy Greer you’ll join in the exciting movement of taking art out of the gallery and into the community and environment, raising awareness in fun and engaging ways. “Craftivism is a new movement of craft, activism and community, a way of looking at life where voicing opinions through creativity makes your voice stronger, your compassion deeper & your quest for justice more infinite. Bring attention to ideas and issues that are important to you by creating site-specific installations on the grounds of Fort Worden. Mandy will show you how to use materials in a DIY (do it yourself) aesthetic and share slides of how artists all over the world are creating community and awareness by taking art and creativity to the streets.
Musical and Legit Theatre
Nicco Annan and Erwin Thomas
If you have wanted to gain some experience with musical theatre this may be for you. The focus in this workshop will be on character development, musicality, and the physical life of each character and the worlds they inhabit. The emphasis is on taking day to day experiences and bringing them to life through the art of acting with a musical twist. No need to worry if you are not a singer; students with all levels of experience are all welcome. What is required are passion and commitment to the work in order for all to play.
Centrum's Young Artist Project workshops are offered in partnership with the Washington State Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.
This program is generously funded by the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, the Washington State Arts Commission, Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, Washington State Parks, the Baker Foundation, the Greater Tacoma Community Foundation, PONCHO, the Sage Foundation, and thousands of individual donors whose generosity celebrates the power of creativity to change lives.
Artist Biographies
Photographer Vesna Pavlovic was born in Serbia and currently makes her home in Nashville, Tennessee where she is an Assistant Professor of Art at Vanderbilt University. She received an MFA degree in visual arts from Columbia University in 2007. Pavlovic has exhibited widely, including solo shows at the Museum of History of Yugoslavia in Belgrade, and the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento. She has been featured in group exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, Tennis Palace Art Museum in Helsinki, Photographers’ Gallery in London, Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, Galerie Fotohof in Salzburg, and Akademie der Bildenen Kunste in Vienna. Her work is represented in major public and private collections.
Gary Copeland Lilley is a North Carolina native. A Copper Canyon Press poet, he is the author of four books: Black Poem, Alpha Zulu, The Reprehensibles, and The Subsequent Blues. He earned his MFA from the Warren Wilson College Program for Writers. Lilley has taught creative writing at Warren Wilson College and within the Great Smokies Writing Program at the University of North Carolina-Asheville. He has been a Poet-in-Residence for Young Chicago Authors and the Poetry Center of Chicago, a visiting writer and lecturer at the Institute of American Indian Art, and at Colby College. He currently lives and teaches in Port Townsend, WA.
Erwin E. A. Thomas is a Brooklyn-based actor, cultural artist, and educator. He holds an MFA in Theater arts from the University of Washington Professional Actors Training Program. While living in Seattle he served on the Board for Youth Speaks, Seattle. As faculty instructor for the University of Washington Comparative History of Ideas Department’s Cape Town Exploration program, he facilitated cross-cultural dialogue about history, memory, identity, conflict. Erwin concentrates on engaging the imagination of audiences and students while exploring issues of memory, identity, history, conflict and dialogue as a means of building strong community. Recently, Erwin has worked with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. In September, 2008, his work in a ground-breaking play, Thomas Bradshaw's “Southern Promises,” made the theater world in New York stand up and take notice. He was featured in both the New York Times and the New Yorker.
Nicco Annan is no stranger to the Regional, Broadway, or Off-Broadway stages. An award winning choreographer, director and actor, Nicco’s work spans the theatrical world to the concert stage. He has worked globally on productions including the “Respect Project” with Tony Award winner George Faison, “Jelly's Last Jam,” several productions of “Dreamgirls” (national), Lynn Notage's “Crumbs from the Table of Joy,” Brecht's “Man is Man” and countless other productions. His work also includes training teenagers to be professionals in the industry. Annan considers it an honor “to be able to work with artists with integrity, who continue to tell the truth to change a life.”
Mandy Greer is a mixed-media installation artist with an MFA from the University of Washington. Her most recent projects are about blending community, installation & performance. Her 2009 piece “Mater Matrix Mother and Medium” is a process-based temporary public art experience commissioned by Seattle Public Utilities involving community action, site-embedded installation and performance produced with dancer Zoe Scofield and composer Morgan Henderson. Her work has shown at Tacoma Art Museum, Henry Gallery, 4Culture Gallery, Soil & Consolidated Works. In 2008 Mandy had her first solo museum show at the Bellevue Arts Museum which traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland. She was nominated for the Portland Museum of Art’s Contemporary Northwest Artist Awards for 2008.
