The autumn months at Centrum find us putting all the pieces together for all the Young Artists programs coming up in 2014. Registration is now open for both Explorations (Grades 7-9) and Water World (Grades 5-6), and sign-ups are coming in!

Explorations 2014 features a blend of faculty from last year, some new faces – and some familiar faces doing new things. Each class is designed to stretch your creative skills and push you just that bit further….

Brand new to Explorations is Margie McDonald, a visual artist whose work recently helped to kick off the grand opening of the Bainbridge Island Art Museum. She’ll be teaching a wearable art class that will be a cross between sculpture and costume-perhaps even fashion!

Dejah Leger (pictured above teaching songwriting) was here two years ago teaching songwriting and is back again. She can tease a melody out of even the most reluctant and is a master of making music fun. If you have a sound in your head – she will help you turn it into a song.

Darwin Nordin is a visual artist and teacher who can show folks how to do most anything. His class “Gizmos & Automata” takes art out of the frame and has it moving in space. Using simple mechanical principals and an odd assortment of materials along with drawing, painting and collage- there’s no limit to what you can devise in this class.

Nicco Annan brings his inspirational teaching to focus on your self-expression through spoken word. I have seen Nicco draw his students out but I think the magic is that he shows people how to draw it out of themselves.

Samantha Rund is back to teach theater. This year, instead of Improv all the way, Samantha is going to take the Shakespeare play “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” as the starting point. Samantha says that just about every kind of character you can imagine shows up in this play.

There will be plenty of dancing with both Rex Kinney teaching hip-hop and Etienne Cakpo teaching African dance and drumming. Joining Etienne again this year is Yaw Amponsah to teach drumming.

Don’t forget taiko – always a favorite class taught by Nancy Ozaki & Gary Tsujimoto. The heart pounding rhythm and physicality of playing taiko seems to rearrange the cells in your body. It’s challenging and fun.

Water World

There’s just no end to the things you can discover in the marine environment at Fort Worden State Park. Water World packs a ton of creativity into a week of scientific discovery. It is hands-on and has you walking on the beach, pulling in a seine net, re-building a whale skeleton, having time to contemplate and create in art, movement and writing studios. Join us!