The Chelsea Standard
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
Woodland wonderland
Kids can enjoy art and nature in weeklong camp
By Sheila Pursglove, Special Writer
PUBLISHED: May 15, 2008
Children can enjoy a woodland wonderland in a week-long art camp, "Explorations of Art and the Forest," offered June 23-27 by the Michigan Friends Center on Clark Lake Road north of Chelsea.
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Youngsters will explore the forests around MFC, discover plants and animals of the woods and lake and create nature-inspired art projects: sculptures, mobiles, masks and animals.
The camp will be led by Eva Leventer, who has studied art all her life, including 13 years at the Rudolf Steiner School in Ann Arbor where she learned watercolor painting and drawing. She majored in painting and drawing at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, and is currently finishing a degree in visual arts education at Eastern Michigan University.
Leventer, a Grass Lake native, got an early introduction to art.
"When I was 13, I went to Italy with a friend and her father's art class," she said. "We lived in Florence for a month studying art.
"It was this experience that convinced me that I wanted to be an artist because I loved painting there so much."
Leventer, who incorporates nature, sculpture, ceramics, weaving, drawing, painting, and printmaking into classes, taught a middle school art class at the Richmond Friends School while in college.
"This launched my passion for teaching art," she says. "In the middle school art class, I supervised a large mural that the students spent the whole semester planning and creating."
After college, she worked as a substitute teacher in Ann Arbor and also taught classes at the Ann Arbor Art Center and Chelsea Center for the Arts. Deciding to go back to school and put her two interests - art and teaching - together, Leventer began a certification program that she will complete this fall. She also teaches library science for kindergarten through fifth-grade at New Beginnings Academy in Ypsilanti.
"I love my job very much," she says. "I've been able to integrate my passion for books, the arts and writing into my curriculum.
Her schooling at Rudolf Steiner was a major influence on her passion for art and nature.
"I spent a lot of time as a child observing, drawing and playing in nature," she says. "I really like discovering animal's homes, learning about their environments and drawing their features. I've enjoyed taking nature walks for as long as I can remember. I find the forest breathes a certain magic which inspires creativity and wonder. My senior project was a series of still life that were compositions of items from different seasons."
Leventer looks forward to combining her interests of nature and art at the MFC art camp. "We'll go on nature hikes to observe the plants and animals and their ecosystems, and collect natural materials for our projects. The children will learn to draw animals in their habitats that live in the area. We'll study different trees and create drawings and mobiles using nature. Each student will choose an ecosystem and create a project that contains the plants and animals of that ecosystem.
"I like to share my passion for nature and art through discovering, and exploring an inner experience or connection we have with the world. My purpose is to guide and expose children to creative ways of thinking and expressing themselves."
For information, contact the Michigan Friends Center at 475-1892.
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