The Firehouse Gallery is set to hold its 20th Summer Art Camp program.
The gallery plans to celebrate the anniversary of the camp with an exhibition, open house and free art classes 12 to 4 p.m. on March 1.
The exhibition will feature art by gallery owner Eric Gibbons, whose work has been published and exhibited internationally, as well as the work of Bob Gherardi, who had some of his first exhibitions at the gallery when it first opened. Their work will be exhibited alongside Firehouse Gallery student work.
First opened in 1970 by Juanita Crosby, Gibbons bought the gallery in May of 1995 running the first art camp program that summer. Growing from just 10 students to about 100 every summer, the camp’s program and approach to art education is the focus of Gibbons’ book, The Art Student’s Workbook, used in schools across the country and English-speaking European schools.
According to Gibbons, his students succeed at higher raters on state exams and SATs. His program is used at South Texas High School for Medical Professionals, ranked in the top 50 schools in the country.
“We don’t do crafts here; students don’t replicate the teacher’s sample. We create works of art that are personal, expressive, and actually quite fun. The kid’s don’t know they are also learning math, science, history, and literature, they just know they get to solve visual problems where no answer is wrong,” Gibbons said in a statement.
Summer Art Camp classes include cartooning, painting, drawing, sculpture and “Crazy Art,” taught be certified art teachers. In Crazy Art, on the the camp’s most popular classes, students paint with squirt guns, use fire to burn sticks and draw like cavemen, paint with brushes tied to (their) heads, or try to draw with blindfolds on.”
More information is online at firehousegallery.com.
