Published: July 25, 2008 07:15 am      

Woodward Arts camp coming up

The Woodward Arts and Theatre Council will hold its annual summer youth arts camp July 28 through Aug. 1 at the Woodward Arts Theatre on Main Street.

“This is the 14th one,” said T.Z. Wright, executive director of the council. “It’s just a week-long camp for kids...8 to 12 and 13 to 17.”

Wright said more than 100 children from around the area will attend the camp.

“We have approximately 100 campers in the younger age group,” Wright said. “We have about 35 in the older age group.

“There’ll be kids from other towns around here,” he said. “There’s a few kids that have relatives around here that come to stay with grandma and grandpa to go to arts camp.”

Wright said campers will receive instruction in a multitude of artistic media.

“There’s 14 instructors...in the various aspects or disciplines of the arts...music...drama...visual arts,” Wright said. “There’ll be a variety of art projects.”

Among the instructors are former Woodward High School art teacher and recently installed member of the Woodward Public Schools Board of Education Roxy Merklin, who will teach the campers a textile-dyeing technique known as batik, and G. Patrick Riley, a “quite noted creator of masks,” Wright said.

Wright said the instructors art will be on display for public viewing at the Plains Indians and Pioneers Museum on Williams Avenue.

“Their work, the instructors’s work, is gonna be featured at the museum,” Wright said. “There’s gonna be a reception Thursday at the museum. It’ll be an opportunity for the public to view their work and meet them.”

The camp has a different theme each year--this year’s theme is “Fairy Tales,” Wright said. “There’s always a theme and that’s what was chosen this year by the committee.”

Wright said many of the camp’s activities will focus on this theme. “The drama stuff will...the visual art will tie into it too,” he said.

Camp runs from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday. Wright said campers need only “bring lunch and their best behavior.”