MANITOU BEACH — Michelle Ott looked around the room at the group of second through fourth graders gathered for the final day of Lake Wonders and Words, the summer’s first arts camp at Manitou Beach Creative Corner.

“Remember what you wrote yesterday?” she asked them.

The students had been asked to write their ideas for what they would do if they were a seagull and were in charge of the lake. A couple of the children quickly shared their answers:

“If the lake were made clean and splendid” — “splendid” having been one of the words of the day.

“There would be more plants and animals to eat.”

“Maybe there’d be a park with a special sort of restaurant only for seagulls,” Ott suggested. “So what else?”

“If there was no litter,” came another answer.

The weeklong camp kicked off a summer full of youth arts programs at Manitou Beach Creative Corner, located at 103 Walnut St. at Manitou Beach.

Manitou Beach Creative Corner was started in 2018 by longtime arts educator Jean Lash after she was approached to do so by the founders of the Manitou Beach Historic Renovation Society, David Gajda and Jose Malagon. The Stubnitz Foundation, the Sage Foundation, and the Addison and Onsted Kiwanis clubs also provide support.

Lash and her friend Ott, who for many years taught middle school English in Chicago, have teamed up at the arts camp since 2021, with Lash leading the visual-arts part of a class like Lake Wonders and Words and Ott helping the students with their poetry.

Over two different sessions of this particular camp — second through fourth graders in one session and fifth through eighth graders in another — the students wrote poetry and created a variety of artwork focused on some lake denizens: fish, frogs, birds, and turtles.

Many of their creations will go into a book which the campers will all receive. The artwork will also go on display for three months, beginning in August, at the Young Artists Gallery located at the Sandbar Café, 103 S. Talbot St. in Addison.

For the participants in the second through fourth grade session, the week’s final project involved coffee filters laid flat on a piece of paper that were colored and sprayed with water, causing the colors to bleed through to the paper and create unique designs.

The children’s creations took a variety of forms. Colton Robidoux, 7, of Addison traced his hand, while Harper Geeting 8, of Pittsfield Twp., drew circles of various colors.

Robidoux’s answer to what he liked about the camp was simple: “Everything!” 

For Geeting, her older sister Arden — who was also in this session — had attended in previous years and “I just wanted to try it. It’s been fun,” she said.

The older students in Lake Wonders and Words’ second session each day had spent the week creating fish, blue herons, and, on this final day, turtles, along with writing their poetry. As they worked on their art, Ott took individuals aside one by one, just as she had in the day’s earlier session, and helped them polish their poems.

Fourteen-year-old Jayden Burger of Hudson was busy at a table nearby with her turtle creation. She’s attended the Manitou Beach Creative Corner summer camps since they began.

For her, the combination of structure and freedom is appealing. While everyone created a fish, for example, they could make their fish any colors they wanted. “So, structure and freedom,” she said.

Eleven-year-old Mira Nichols of Manitou Beach, who was hard at work on a picture of a painted turtle and making it as realistic as she could, is also a longtime attendee.

“I’ve been coming since I was 7,” Nichols said. “It’s awesome.”

Meanwhile, Lash circulated around the room making suggestions for what the students needed to make their turtles really great: how to make an eye stand out, or that a turtle needed wrinkles around its neck. Some of the turtles, like Nichols’, were highly realistic, while others were much more fanciful, sporting colors like blue and purple.

So far, at least 125 youngsters have registered for Manitou Beach Creative Corner’s camps this year. Besides the sorts of creations the Lake Wonders and Words students worked on, the camps run the gamut from clay classes and making mobiles to teaching older students the techniques needed to draw portraits.

To Lash, the camps offer students opportunities they might not get otherwise. Perhaps their school doesn’t have an art program, or even if it does, it probably doesn’t have the huge array of different types of supplies that Manitou Beach Creative Corner can offer with the help of its sponsors.

But there’s much more to the experience than the art itself. “These kids, they come from all over, and every day when they come in, they usually sit at a different table,” she said. “So they make new friends.” 

Upcoming art camps at Manitou Beach Creative Corner

• July 14-18: Polymer Clay Relief (grades 3-5 from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.; grades 6-8 from 1-3 p.m.)
• July 14-16: Portraits (grades 6-8, 3:30-5:30 p.m.)
• July 21-25: Moving Art Mobiles​ (grades 1-3, 9-10:30 a.m.)
• July 21-25: Painting with Yarn (grades 4-6, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.)
• July 21-25: Expressive Painting with Acrylics (grades 6-8, 1:30-3:30 p.m.)
• July 28-Aug. 1: Moving Lines & Shapes (grades K-1 from 8:30-9:30 a.m.; grades 2-4 from 10-11:30 a.m.; grades 5-8 from noon to 2 p.m.)

For more information and to register, go to www.manitoubeachcreative.org.