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Art Camp In Carrollwood Is Fine For Kids

TRIBUNE PHOTO CANDACE C. MUNDY

Alec Firrincieli, 7, draws a space monkey during the painting class, a part of the fine arts summer camp at the Carrollwood Cultural Center. The youths, ages 6-11 years-old, learned dance, painting, printmaking, pottery and piano.

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By ELIZABETH LEE BROWN

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 25, 2008

CARROLLWOOD - Two days into a weeklong summer fine arts camp, the group of 34 students finished a rendition of a song from "Annie" and broke off to explore other artistic talents.

Some went upstairs to learn to step and dig in the dance hall. The rest branched off to learn crayon etching and charcoal drawing.

The camp at the Carrollwood Cultural Center was designed to be an introduction to a variety of fine arts for children between ages 6 and 11.

Students spent the morning in chorus and theater class and then rotated into 35-minute courses in dance, piano, painting, printmaking and pottery.

"We wanted to kind of model it like a wheel so the kids would have everything," said Helen Michaelson, the center's educational outreach director. "Because they are so young, it's important for them to get a taste of everything."

The camp continues this week with 32 students with the same schedule, but teachers are offering different projects because there are some returning campers.

Michaelson said she hopes to expand the fine arts camp next summer by adding more weeks.

Afternoon sessions geared toward middle school band and elementary strings were canceled this year because of lack of interest.

She is hoping many of the campers will find something they enjoy and return for a six-week course in that discipline when children's classes begin next month.

On the second day of camp, pottery was a big hit.

Students learned to make wall pockets out of a thin, rectangular slab of clay. They started by rolling a piece of burlap over the clay to give the piece some texture.

The class then scored the edges with a fork, brushed on some slip - a mixture that acts like a clay adhesive - and folded the bottom end up to form the pouch. They stuffed a balled-up sheet of tissue paper inside the pocket to help keep its shape.

Campers went from learning notes on a piano to drawing a parrot in a cartooning class to sketching portraits of puppies with a charcoal stick.

For 9-year-old Victoria Alba, mini-lessons in dance and art were the most fun.

"You get to learn new steps, and I learned new things about all the different artists," said Victoria, who attends Sand Pine Elementary in New Tampa.

Sophia Carucci, 7, said her favorite classes have been dance and piano.

"You get to learn to play different songs, and you can sing with them. It's fun," said Sophia, who attends Essrig Elementary.

Dance teacher Teil Rey said she designed the basic routine so that first-time dancers could learn an upbeat Broadway-jazz number in four days and then perform it at an end-of-the-week show.

Rey had her dancers practice the arm moves and footwork that included a combination of marches, steps, digs, jumps and crossovers.

"If you say it out loud with your mouth, your feet will know what to do," she said.

In Mary Ellen O'Brien's printmaking class, the young artists were creating scenes using scratchboard art.

Each student used a sharp wooden tool to scratch out a picture on a sheet of crayon etching.

"Scrape, scrape, scrape. That is the key word," she said. "Everything you draw, you want to scrape off the black so the color will come out. The more you scratch out, the more color you will get."

Next door in the painting class, teacher Mary Ellen Bit- ner had her students personalize a portfolio to hold their artwork and then draw pictures of puppies with charcoal sticks.

Bitner passed out foam shapes to use as blenders so students could smear the charcoal lines to look like fur.

"You don't have to be real neat because puppies, their edges are soft, aren't they?" she said.

Throughout the class, Bitner walked around helping the students smudge their black lines while working on her own charcoal puppies on the easel.

"The thing about drawing is that it trains you how to look, to look at the shape of things," she said.

Reporter Elizabeth Lee Brown can be reached at (813) 865-1502 or ebrown@tampatrib.com.

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