The Mazza Museum has the world's largest collection of original artwork by children's book illustrators. They have developed a camp for elementary and junior high kids using that art to teach a lot more.
The Young Artist Workshop has a goal to use science, technology, engineering, and math to help students find their creative voice through art.
"We want the kids to get immersed in everything," stated Heather Sensel, young artist workshop coordinator. "So, obviously we are going to change it up, like today with the owls, we did owl pellets before we actually came in and made the owls and then we will do a nature walk later and then they will create another clay project, but each room has centered around a picture book and then we run from there."
Some of the students on Tuesday started with the book "Silent Swoop" and from there they learned more about the biology of owls, like how their ears are a little different.
"The left side is lower than the right side," said Mae Watson, young artist.Â
And then the fun part, getting their hands on some clay to sculpt what they have learned.
"It's fun to like work with it, it's a fun texture and it's just really fun," added Watson.
"It's fun to work with because you can make fun stuff out of it," explained Charlotte Phillips, young artist. "Like if you're trying to make an owl like I am, ears, feet, eyes, and the wings, it's kind of complicated and that's what I like about it."
While they are learning different lessons around different books, there is one overall theme the kids are taking home with them.
"Can't give up!" You can't give up, I just never give up. If I'm working on something, I never give up until I'm done with it," said Kenley Thwaits, young artist.
"We are so hard sometimes to say you got to keep doing it until you get it right, you do, but you can fail and failure is a good thing because failure will bring success. So even in art, even in what we do at the STEAM center it is about letting the kids do it and the teachers stand back and sometimes that's difficult because we want to fix everything. Someday we're gonna be older, I know I'm getting older, they're going to need, these kids are going to need to fix problems for me," said Sensel. "
And who knows where the camp will lead these young artists.
"We could have our next famous illustrator sitting right here in one of our 68 students," added Sensel.
