by Raphaella Ruggiero, Photographer and Communications Specialist
The latest addition to the Minsky Art Center has sent the world of art at camp into the 21st century- with the use of an iPad. What use is an iPad when it comes to art, you may ask? This technological innovation has allowed the campers to go that extra mile in visualizing and researching ideas in order to make their wildest imaginations a thing of creation. As Grace Sherman, our Art Director explained, the iPad opens up a whole new area of “graphic and applied arts” to the already existing Fine Arts/Arts and Crafts program at the Minsky Arts Center. It allows the campers to explore and learn how to use Adobe Photoshop and Procreate, along with the Apple pencil, to create drawings and photographs and manipulate them by building on layers. It’s an amazing tool for the campers to research and develop the ideas and skills they want to use. The introduction of this new program has opened up a world of opportunity in the art room where campers can expand their creativity and not be limited just to the crates of books for the campers to look through for inspiration and instructions. The campers can use it to look for design ideas, “how to’s”, and references; the creative possibilities are endless!
This is a very useful skill for campers to have as it is not restricted to just art-based professions, but also jobs such as marketing and advertising, which find this a highly prized skill to learn early on. And the campers are eating it up! The campers have used it to find images they want to use for nailing (using nails and colored string to create a design on a slab of wood). Other campers have scanned in photographs and, using the layering process on Photoshop, turned them into completely new images; they then used these images and turned them into a wood burning piece which they they painted. This new program in the Minsky has really allowed for a huge variation in medias and enhanced the projects campers take home!