Teen Artists and Performers Can Shine This Summer at The Art Center

The middle and high school years, for all their challenges, are an amazing time of life. Teens are starting to find their own voices and carve their own paths in the world. This is often the time when their creativity shines brightest and they begin applying a greater capacity for focus and finesse to their passion projects to make truly remarkable art of all kinds.

This summer, The Art Center has several opportunities for teen creators to showcase and develop their talents. Our teen art exhibition and teen open mic night invite visual and performing artists to share their work with the world, and our specialty summer camps offer a deep dive into creative skills that can help hone their hobbies or potential career paths.

High Honors Call for Art

High Honors is our annual Middle and High School art exhibition, held in our main gallery from mid-June to mid-July. Hundreds of campers, adult students, and other visitors see the work on display.

The call for art is still active through June 8 for all middle and high schoolers from Fulton, Forsyth, Dekalb, and Gwinnett Counties. Submissions are free and each artist will have at least one artwork accepted to the show for a chance to win cash awards.

Stand Up Comedy Camp

 

Calling all teen comedians! This year we’re offering a new performing arts camp teaching the art of writing and performing stand up comedy. At the end of camp, students will perform a fully completed set in a comedy showcase.

Teen Figure & Character Drawing

For the teen artist who loves doing portraits or developing their own cast of OCs, this camp is an excellent resource! Campers will learn the fundamentals of proportion and anatomy for realistic figure drawing, and then they will learn how to thoughtfully break the rules using the principles of design to make memorable stylized characters. Two camps are available, one for Week 5 and another for Week 7.

Online Video Production Camp

Aspiring content creators can learn some of the fundamental skills for creating online videos using their own phones. This camp goes over how to set up audio and lighting and coaches campers in acting, screenwriting, directing, and editing so that they can create original videos that will stand out online. Two camps are available: one for Week 7 and another for Week 9.

Teen Writing Camp

Teen novelists can expand their creative writing skills in this deep-dive camp. Forget the grammar lessons; this camp goes into the fundamentals of character creation, plot development, and how to use setting to tell your story. At the end of each camp day writers will get words down on their own work-in-progress by undertaking an epic word battle against their instructor, using word counts to defeat monsters in gamified writing sprints.

Improvisational Theatre Camps

Teens can get into character this summer with our camps taught by former Second City instructor Amanda Rountree. For rising grades 6-8, we have Create-A-Play where campers use improv games and collaboration to build a brand new play from scratch.  The Teen Improv to Sketch camp follows the Second City methods to create sketch comedy out of improvised scenes, much like SNL and other comedy variety shows!

Teen Painting

Leslie Murphy returns to summer camp this year with her Teen Painting courses! Teens will learn fundamental drawing and painting techniques to create their own finished works of original artwork. Campers get to flex their creative muscles and make artwork that reflects their own personal vision under the instruction of one of our most experienced painting teachers. Two camps are available, one in Week 2 and another in Week 4.

Teen Pottery

Play in the dirt this summer with our weekly pottery camps! Teens learn how to throw on the potter’s wheel to make functional ceramic pieces. They will also have the opportunity to create original ceramic sculptures to learn fundamentals of handbuilding.

Teen Open Mic Night

After the closing reception of our High Honors exhibition, we’re inviting teen performers to share their talents at our first Teen Open Mic Night. We’ve held a couple of 18+ open mic nights at The Art Center (and we have another in June!), but this one celebrates the younger talent in the area. Teen musicians, comedians, poets, storytellers, magicians, and more are invited to showcase their skills at 7 PM on Friday July 17. We’re currently accepting performance submissions through this quick form. Open Mic Night is free to attend and to perform, so definitely mark your calendars for a fun night.

We look forward to seeing the talented teens of the community here at The Art Center every summer! Many of our students form lifelong friendships and even return to us after graduation to teach camps themselves in the future. We hope to see your teen as a student, an exhibiting artist, or as a performer at our many fun events this summer!