Description
We are excited for a beautiful, joyful, creative summer 2023!
Our full and 1/2 day summer art camps 2023 happen on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays.
The full days are for ages 6 – 12.
The 1/2 days are for ages 4 – 8.
And don’t worry, we know these might fill quickly, we will be offering 1-time mini-camps on some Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, with fun similar themes. Those will be announced the first week of March. Please make sure you sign up for our waiting list if you don’t get into the camp you wanted!
Note: if you are signing up siblings to the same workshop and your family financially needs a discount, please enter the code sibling10.
And, if you are able, we ask families to consider chipping in towards our community fund to support a child to attend camp who normally couldn’t and support the costs that it takes to run our art camps and studio.
Please scroll to the bottom to read more info about our summer camps.
Thank you for your support!
Warmly, Christina + Love Lab Studio
JUNE
wk 1 – strawberry joy
June 12, 13, 14
Mixed age 6 – 12
9 am – 3 pm
$270
Berries! To launch the summer and get ready for the summer solstice, this week we will be making lots of cute art and craft all about summer fruit! This is the time of year in Maine when we go strawberry picking, so we are going to celebrate this beauty and joy. Berry-themed paintings + drawings, sculpture, jewelry, and berry art bags to hold our art supplies we will dye and paint for the summer! This week will also include a little berry cooking project, which will be extra exciting.
wk 2 – jam it up: art + songwriting – 1/2 day, younger kids
June 26, 27, 28
Younger kids 4 – 8 yrs old
9 am – noon, 1/2 days
$170
Singing and making art is a powerful combo! A song can be an affirmation, a way to support ourselves by hearing just the right messages we need to move through a tough time, or to inspire us! Collaboratively and individually, we’ll write a song for ourselves. Using a multi-step process, we’ll weave together writing, melodies, and music to craft a song that’s entirely authored by US with accompaniment provided by beloved teaching musician artist Emilia Dahlin who co-teaches this workshop. We will also make some cool art, including band badges, a moving picture “cranky” and more. Our song will be professionally recorded and we will perform for our grown-ups on the final day!
JULY
wk 3 – my favorite animal – 1/2 day, younger kids
July 3, 4, 5
Younger kids 4 – 8 yrs old
9 am – noon, 1/2 days
$170
What animals do you love? This will be such a fun week! Maine artists past and present including Ashley Bryan, Bernard Langlais, and Dahlov Ipcar will inspire our work as we make sculptural baby animals together with found wood, small puppet animals, and clay. We will also create some larger prints and collages of our favorite animals. This 3-day younger kid art camp will be super fun. We will also be collecting food for the Animal Refuge League of Greater Portland this week.
wk 4 – nature love: paint, potions + sculptures
July 10, 11, 12
Mixed age 6 – 12 yrs old
9 am – 3 pm
$270
Making our own paint through traditional methods with skilled art teacher Elise, and using our own paint, plus hand-crafted paint created by a Canadian Indigenous-owned company, we will examine new ways and aesthetics to create art that doesn’t harm the planet. We will be making projects like watercolors with natural paints, seed buddy sculptures, natural dyed fabric, working with hand-made and post-consumer paper, making mud pies, and more. We will also be heading out to the park to paint the water and tree view, a favorite summer thing to do! This will be our first ZERO plastic art camp week at the studio!
wk 5 – jam it up: art + songwriting
July 17, 18, 19
Mixed age 6 – 12 yrs old
9 am – 3 pm
$270
Singing and making art is a powerful combo! A song can be an affirmation, a way to support ourselves by hearing just the right messages we need to move through a tough time, or to inspire us! Collaboratively and individually, we’ll write a song for ourselves. Using a multi-step process, we’ll weave together writing, melodies, and music to craft a song that’s entirely authored by US with accompaniment provided by beloved teaching musician artist Emilia Dahlin who co-teaches this workshop. We will also make some cool art, including band badges, a moving picture “cranky” and more. Our song will be professionally recorded and we will perform for our grown-ups on the final day!
wk 6 – fashion + me
July 24, 25, 26
Mixed age 6 – 12 yrs old
9 am – 3 pm
$270
Isn’t it fun to make our own clothes? Collaborating with skilled art teacher Elise, we will design first as fashion illustrators, and then using both felting processes and gathered recycled/upcycled material from a local Maine fashion house will make some real creations – for our dolls and some accessories for ourselves too. We will look at contemporary artists Nick Cave and the textile design work of Loquat Shop, and also layered into our fashion work will be the idea of mending. Some of our artists may love to knit or crochet, we can layer that in as well! For this camp, please bring your favorite doll (or stuffy) so we can support them with new fashion! We will take our dolls on some outside adventures to the park one day (or more if they can fit safely in our wagon!). At the end of this camp, we will do a little “fashion show” to celebrate.
AUGUST
wk 7 – fashion + me – 1/2 day, younger kids
August 7, 8, 9
Younger kids 4 – 8 yrs old
9 am – noon, 1/2 days
$170
This is a smaller version for younger friends of our popular fashion camp. We will design first as fashion illustrators, and then using both felting processes and gathered recycled/upcycled material from a local Maine fashion house will make some real creations – for our dolls and some accessories for ourselves too. We will look at contemporary artists Nick Cave and the textile design work of Loquat Shop, and also layered into our fashion work will be the idea of mending. Some of our artists may love to knit or crochet, we can layer that in as well! For this camp, please bring your favorite doll (or stuffy) so we can support them with new fashion! We will take our dolls on some outside adventures to the park one day (or more if they can fit safely in our wagon!). At the end of this camp, we will do a little “fashion show” to celebrate.
wk 8 – mini tiny village by the sea
August 14, 15, 16
Mixed age 6 – 12 yrs old
9 am – 3 pm
$270
Isn’t making tiny stuff so fun? We will be making tiny, teeny villages, rooms, food, and people will be the theme of this workshop! We will use recycled, upcycled, found, nature, wood, and also some dough, clay, wire, beads, and more at this fun workshop where we make everything super small! Each child will take home their own tiny house and get to play and build something more collaborative as week. We will work hard to make sure all our creations would be safe if they blew into our beloved nearby ocean. This will be a fun and busy art camp!
wk 9 – sunflower pop up shop
August 21, 22, 23
Mixed age 6 – 12 yrs old
9 am – 3 pm
$270
The sunflowers will be blooming, and we are going to celebrate, study, and make art about them while also building and adding to a little pop-up shop where we can sell a piece ( or addition) of our art at a community gathering in the park! We will explore mediums like print, drawing, painting, and 3-d flowers. We will also look at funding structures and share a portion of what we decide to sell for bartering or maybe actual money. The children will work through a design process with us to make these decisions! This will be a celebratory art camp, and wonderful for young entrepreneurs to think more about what it means to create and exchange something in and for the world.
*extra info
before art camp!
> We will send you a welcome email before your art camp, reminding you of the camp ahead and anything you need to remember or bring.
> Each parent/guardian must sign our online forms (including media form, release form, and other important info) that will arrive in your welcome email this spring.
> Come ready to have fun and become a part of the studio! It’s always good to wear clothes it’s OK to get dirty too. We will detail all of this in our welcome email.
waiting list
Please make sure to view our waiting list inquiry form on our contact page and submit your camp week choices if you would like to be on our waiting list! Please also know we sometimes do open up camp spots, and we also will continue to add in 1-time workshops, so get on that list!
cancellation policy
If you need to cancel and do it before 30 days of your camp session, we can issue you a refund, less $50 for staff and processing fees. If you need to cancel closer to the camp session, we will do our best to find you a spot in another camp but cannot guarantee this, but are non-refundable. If you need to cancel a camp due to illness, we will make you up a big art kit to do at home but are unable to refund you. If we need to cancel a camp due to our team and illness, we will first try to reschedule our camp days, and if we can’t give out partial gift cards but no full refunds will be given. For weather-related cancellations, we will offer make-up dates. Thank you for your partnership on this.
what
Each camp has an innovative, funky and fun, project-based curriculum that we adjust slightly to the energy and members of the group. Our projects are influenced by nature, and contemporary/historical artists and change-makers. Specific books will be carefully curated to align with the themes of each week, with thoughtful, caring discussions, playful games, nurturing fun yoga, and some singing and play interwoven into each day. All materials are high quality, sustainably, and mindfully chosen–recycled/repurposed or ethically made. Each day, a different art process in the studio greets the children and launches our work together!
Besides the fun thematic projects, we will weave in choice time to paint on easels, play, and always choices for project work. Our creative teaching approach is inquiry-based and responsive, and we support and respect the curiosity and imagination of the young child. We will do a snack outside, and then for full-day art camp we usually have lunch in the park! After lunch we play at the nearby Tying Street playground, will do an all-fruit popsicle (with parent approval), and then keep at the art and studio play!
who
We welcome and celebrate a group of mixed-age children and work to give camp choices to accommodate. Each art camp will be run by a team of highly trained and thoughtful teachers, with engaged interns and assistants. We always have 2- 3 caring teachers during art camps.
healthy community
For the safety and health of all, we have a robust Covid process, which we will need everyone to adhere to in order to have a safe community. Currently, we all are wearing masks in the studio, but take mask breaks outside when working in our studio courtyard and in the park! We ask that everyone work with us to make sure your children come healthy to the studio. We will revisit our Covid and healthy community policy prior to camp starting and will send out our plan before camp!
our space
Our space is fun and joyful, bright and renovated, known as Love Lab Studio. The design is thoughtfully curated for the needs of the children. We are located at 26 Brackett Street, a mixed residential and retail neighborhood in the West End of Portland, at the edge of a beautiful park and playground and a nearby urban food forest. This year, our camp will happen both inside our studio (with windows open, ceiling fans, and Hepa filters on) and outside in our temporary outside studio patio garden or park when we can. You will arrive at the bright studio usually with nice music playing, we take off your shoes, find your cubby and hooks to store your things – then wash hands at the art sink, and we have a project to get into right away! It is very calm! The children do their warm-up project, then we gather and circle up and go through our fun activity choice areas and project themes!
some of our values
With backgrounds as studio/craft/public artists and designers, certified art teachers, Waldorf inspired/trained, advanced degrees, service learning, college teaching experience, contemporary art education pedagogy of all kinds, and more. We weave books in every day that are directed towards opening our minds to be deeply caring and embracing of the diversity of humans and nature. Other values include:
* The whole child: social & emotional development, inclusion within a deeply caring and welcoming community
* Child as a communicator + poet: language development through participation, listening, art
* Child as co-creator: project-based, hands-on, individual learning and collaboration
* Child as informed citizen: community member, global + ecological participant. We care for each other, and work to develop our ability to do that better all the time.
* Child as artist: centering arts, creativity, imagination, joy + healing in all we do!
We look forward to seeing you at the studio!