The Sense of Wonder Creations Newsletter 2006-07

Dear Friends,

We have had another great year of creativity and learning. Our camp and art classes had full enrollment and we were able to give financial aid to many campers and art students.

Summer Camp 2006
During the summer of 2006, in addition to the regular art program, campers sanded, hammered and glued boat parts, birdhouses and abstract sculptures. They made puppets with Dan Butterworth, the award winning puppeteer. Dan also performed his “Carnaval del Mundo” , a multicultural extravaganza, at Owen Park. It was free for the community sponsored by SOWC and the Martha’s Vineyard Cooperative Bank. Dan will be performing again this year on August 3rd at Owen Park.

We spent one week focusing on things that fly and were invited to observe the MV Model Aircraft Association at one of the High School playing fields. The campers and counselors wrote five puppet shows, three plays and four original songs about caring for the environment, appreciation of ethnic diversity and religious tolerance. Our songs were so popular that we were asked to serenade a neighbor’s luncheon party for a donation to the *Walk A Thon benefit fund.

The campers painted a 4 x 8 foot canvas mural to exchange with “The Vineyard School” in Siem Reap, Cambodia. They sewed beautiful, colorful Teddy Bears to send to children in an orphanage in Cambodia. They papier mache’ed and painted a four foot high Penguin Mother and Baby for a raffle to benefit The South Georgia Heritage Trust which cares for sea creatures on SG, near Antarctica. The raffle for the Panda Bear from last year went to Andrew Spatafora who lives in Hinsdale, Illinois.

Pam Putney, who works for the World Health Organization, and Kara Alexander who, with her husband, raised the money to build the “The Vineyard School”, came to talk to the campers about Cambodia, Asia and South America with photos, folk art, clothing and books. Calvin Lloyd Morgan, who is from Jamaica, talked to them about his culture. We had young people representing six different countries attending SOW last summer: Cambodia, China, Italy, Mexico, Russia and Singapore.
The *Walk A Thon in August was a big success where we raised $1580. Half was sent to the Vineyard School in Siem Reap, Cambodia and half to the Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary children’s education fund. Two of the CIT’s (counselors in training) donated their salary to the benefit.

Art Classes 2006-07
During the F/W/S sessions art students have been working hard drawing, painting, sculpting clay, printmaking, 3D sculpture, making puppets, masks, studying Art History, constructing boats and wood sculptures and lots of other creative projects. This coming week they will be painting and sewing squares to add to a Peace Quilt. The “Children’s Cloth of Many Colors” will be traveling around the world bringing peace and love messages and inspiration to war torn areas. It has already caused a big stir by making the grass grow two inches on the West lawn of the Capitol building in Washington. We will be painting more squares this summer. Check out the website.
http://www.communitiesofpeace.org/programs/childrens_cloth.html

Last spring SOW art students painted beautiful Martha’s Vineyard nature scenes which were made into cards to benefit the Tashmoo Children’s Park in Vineyard Haven. They are for sale in some of the stores in VH. Also Rachel Orr and Barra Peak are selling cards from their home. Their phone number is 508 696 7616.

Summer Camp 2007
We have another exciting summer planned with our full program of art, music, puppetry, theater, film, environmental, cultural and community awareness. In addition to this we have some special events lined up: Christine Conley will be with us, sponsored by the Vineyard Energy Project, during the week of July 16th. We will be focusing on alternative energy and how to reduce our carbon emissions. We have many fun building projects that week. We will be creating and adding to a butterfly, hummingbird and bee garden throughout the summer. Geoff Cassel and Saskia Vanderhoop will be doing some workshops on Native American Wilderness Awareness and Tracking. Bill and Whitney Moody are coming to show us their amazing Native American tool and arrowhead collection. We will be putting together an educational flyer to pass out to the public on how to lower our carbon emissions. As I mentioned before:* Dan Butterworth, the award winning marionette puppeteer from Providence will be here the week of July 30th. ** The kids will be painting squares to add to the "Children's Cloth of Many Colors" traveling around the world. There will be visitors from foreign countries to show and tell us about their cultures. Myra Romaine will be coming in to show us her African clothing and crafts, tell folk tales and dance. This summer we have campers participating from Italy, Mexico, Russia and Singapore. We will be doing another Walk A Thon to raise money for an orphanage in Africa and the Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary. In addition to other creative arts projects, Laura Benjamin will be returning for the last two weeks of camp and we will be making a CD of our collection of environmentally and socially conscious songs, recorded by Jim Parr, on August 9th and 16th. One of our adult counselors, Seychelle Roberts, knows sign language and will be teaching us the vocabulary all summer long. We will also be initiating our annual activities of painting a cultural exchange mural and forming another papier maché creature to raffle off for endangered animals.

This is a brief outline of some of the activities we have planned for the summer.

A few of the projects we will be focusing on in the future are: Sharing the documentary film about Martha's Vineyard Regional High School students speaking out on the topics of peace and justice called "It's Our World Too" produced and directed by SOWC. High School students will be painting a mural on an outside wall in Vineyard Haven about the Multicultural and Maritime Heritage of MV.
Thank you so much for supporting the worthwhile projects and programs that Sense of Wonder Creations brings to our community and the world.

Please call if you want us to elaborate on any of the weekly activities scheduled for this summer.

With gratitude and love from Pam and the SOWC staff