Art Van Go invites young artists to travel the world through creativity and imagination during its annual summer camp that includes unique one-week sessions focused on a particular theme. During each thematic session, students discover famous artists’ techniques and styles and use their creativity to make new masterpieces. They also have lots of fun by snacking on arty treats, celebrating their art accomplishments during review games, and even become host at the weekly ice cream party. Keep reading to learn about the exciting and enriching art experiences planned for this summer!

Here's a brief sketch of what's to come:

Week 1: June 6-9 "Island Hopping"

Pack your travel gear and 'art-van-hop' to four inspirational isles - Nantucket, Galapagos, Tahiti, and Cyprus. Paint a famous lighthouse that washed out to sea, draw a giant endangered tortoise with bright fluorescent pastels on black paper, capture the exotic and colorful flora of the South Pacific like Gauguin, and re-create an ancient clay tile with a mosaic border unearthed from a Mediterranean hillside.

Week 2: June 13-16 "The Time Machine"

Set the dials, count backward, and blast off! Become an art historian when you climb into the Art Van Go time machine and travel back to the days of classical art, which illustrated how people lived in the olden days. Design your own Grecian urn, make a faux marble bust, illustrate a famous fable on a medieval screen, and create a self-portrait in Florentine fashion.

Week 3: June 20-23 "Gulliver's Travels"

Thnk BIG and small. Learn how proportions and point of view can create a giant of a drawing. Design a Lilliputian ship with all the trimmings, use Botero's technique to render a drawing of Gulliver tied to the ground, paint a royal portrait of an English king who inspired the story, and make a swashbuckling sword to defend yourself against mini soldiers.

Week 4: June 27-30 "gARTens"

Open the gates and enter a place where artists and scientists join together to depict nature. Use pen and watercolors to illustrate an English songbird, make a sunflower taller than you, paint a Japanese footbridge as you pretend to be on your own floating studio, construct a garden sculpture to put in your own backyard, and create a new species of butterfly to wear on your head like a lepidopterist.

Summer Break!

Week 5: July 11-14 "Midsummer Night's Dream"

Listen to Shakespeare's tale of fairies, forests and dreamy nights to create three-dimensional illustrations from this classic play. Use wood, glitter, stones, and other fun stuff to make donkey masks and magic wands, a set design of an enchanted forest, a stylish portrait of the Bard, and a Chagall-like scene from the play.

Week 6: July 18-21 "Line Dancing "

Forget about straight lines and staying inside them! Get your body moving as you loop, zig zag, wave and swirl with brushes, pens, fingers, wire, and even marbles. You'll create rock n' rollin' abstracts like Pollock, 'starry starry night' skies like Van Gogh, rhythmic paintings like Kandinsky, and swaying mobiles like Calder.

Week 7: July 25-28 "The Cat Who Walked Across France "

Follow the journey of an artist's cat as she views the locations that inspired famous artists like Monet, Van Gogh, Lautrec and Chagall. Use oil pastels, impasto painting, and colored pencils to capture the cat as she peers at the 'artspirational' Notre Dame cathedral, the flowery French countryside, the Moulin Rouge, and the Eiffel Tower.

Week 8: August 1-4 "Get Dimensional"

Inspired by works from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., create art using different materials like wood, glue, Styrofoam, cloth, strings, and other things. Turn your own clothing into a soft sculpture, different textures into a word collage, scraps of wood into a mysterious dream house, and mixed media into a circuit racetrack.