The art department held its annual Core Art Media Production last Thursday and Friday to help retain and recruit art students as well as to develop their skills as artists.
Art students work each semester to produce pieces situated around a particular theme — for 2013, an original rodeo.
Students create individual pieces of artwork, and they also participate in a group project to make one large piece of artwork, also developing skills in leadership and team building while making the art experience fun, according to organizers.
“It was successful because we had students kind of mentoring other students,” art professor Gary Goldberg said. “‘How do you do this?’ or, ‘oh try this color’ and ‘mix these things together.’ It’s not so much the outcome of what the artwork looks like, it’s more of the process and the experience the students have trying to get them to bond with each other and make friends. [Objectives are] to get around and see different parts of the art department maybe they wouldn’t ordinarily see, and get out of their comfort zone a little bit.”
According to Goldberg, it is a beginning-of-the-year group activity for all the art students, and this will be the eighth year it has been held.
“We try to come up with a theme each year,” Golberg said. “This one was based on Alexander Calder’s ‘Circus,’ which was a piece that I think was done in the 1940s. So, it’s about 5 feet by 7 feet and the figures are about 4 inches tall. So we looked at that as kind of a fun interesting piece and thought well how can we transform that. We started talking and just thought it would be fun to do a rodeo and just take that idea and kind of transmute it.”
This summer, Goldberg gave a talk at a conference about this activity, and some of the objectives of it are to try to get students to know all the professors by working with them in different ways in addition to getting to know each other before the semester gets underway.
“The more we get students plugged into the art department, the more successful they are,” he said.
Goldberg also said the students learn news skills while in a more relaxed setting.
“By having a fun event, with barbecue and burgers at the end, and doing something that’s not graded, it’s just kind of a fun thing,” he said. “That’s a way to get students to kind of ‘plug in’ and get excited about art and look forward to it every year. We made t-shirts so they learned a new skill. A lot of them had never done that before. We’re interested in the kind of subtle ways of getting retention. The more activities we can do like this, we feel like it helps the overall environment that the students are in.”
Sydney Kuehler, senior and sculpture major, said she really enjoyed this year’s CAMP.
“This camp this year was a lot more developed and it had more of a direct plan than they’ve had in the past,” she said. “It went more fluidly throughout the two days that we had it, and the end product was really awesome.”
Kuehler, an art student since 2009, said she has attended CAMP for the past four years.
“It definitely grows every year,” she said. “It’s developing because it’s growing with time. Before, we would have 2 or 3 projects going at one time and all the students would work together and this time we had one major project. It’s not hanging up, but it will be installed in the foyer gallery sometime this week. The great thing about art camp is that we have new students coming into the art department every year, and it gives us a chance to get to know each other. If you’re working in class you don’t necessarily have time to chat.”
Kuehler said students do not get too advanced in art camp, especially because it’s the first week of school. The challenge is not making it but in using your creativity and working together to create it. So as long as everybody put in a helping hand it was “anything goes.”
“There was no telling everyone else what to do,” she said. “The concept of the camp was ‘original rodeo’ so we were really pushing to do whatever you feel like doing.”
Kuehler said she enjoyed the camp because it not only was something coherent to the area but it also challenged students to push their boundaries of what a rodeo could be and not necessarily what it is.
“There were things like T-Rexes, and there was a drag queen,” she said.
According to Kuehler, CAMP was a success and she got to know a lot of the new students. The whole university saw an influx of new students and we definitely felt that in our department, she said.
Art Secretary Jesika Fisher said CAMP is very beneficial thing for our students because it introduces students to the different art concepts.
“As far as ‘buzz’ goes, we generally show the results of our efforts at the opening,” Fisher said, “which is coming up on Friday the 13th, so it’s a multi-faceted type of thing. The students get a big boost because they get to experience it and then they can spread it themselves. It’s a good tool to talk about to potential students. It’s a good recruitment tool.
Fisher also believes CAMP has greatly improved over the years and continues to succeed at meeting its goals.
“Improvement is part of being in school. You’re learning. We’re always trying to improve. It’s good, but there’s room for improvement. Each camp is a different type of animal. Each year has a different theme. We may be utilizing certain concepts depending on the year.”
CORRECTION: In the Sept. 4 print edition, one of the photos accompanying this article incorrectly identified Tommy Todd. The information in the online version has been updated and corrected. The Wichitan apologizes for the error.
