CAMP

Last Thursday, we participated in C.A.M.P.'s (Community Arts and Media Project) soon-to-be-monthly fundraiser. Local artists donated art for a silent auction and michael and i were asked to contribute. my best friendola Na-Do provided music with her latest project, NaDo's Delight. The lighting was perfect and I captured some amazing silhouette shots. (notice her little admirer? whitman was fascinated but kept putting his hand in the tip jar.)

Michael and the kids making use of CAMP's art area.

"The Community Arts and Media Project (CAMP) is a local independent effort to bring free and sustainable resources to its neighborhood and to the city of St. Louis. Through the means of art, media, open forums, open doors, event space and collaborative projects, CAMP will provide a new center for creative interaction, welcoming people of all ways of life. Thriving inside of the historic Randall Building at the corner of Cherokee Street and Minnesota Avenue, CAMP considers its location in crucial juxtaposition with its mission. The crossroads of CAMP span out into an extremely diverse range of incomes, races, cultures and ideas. We want to be agents to foster cultural fusion and positive ideas. We believe that art and open spaces provide that agency.

The Community Arts and Media Project takes form not only as a space for the public but also as an umbrella for several groups who rent affordable office space inside the building and contribute to the vision of CAMP. These groups include the Confluence newspaper, Gateway Green Alliance , St. Louis Independent Media. CAMP has also given birth to new educational projects such as the South Side Workshop Exploring Appropriate Technologies (SWEAT), which not only focuses on human-powered technologies, but also provides a bicycle workshop for the neighborhood youth and broader St. Louis bike riders; South Side University, a local “free school” that offers classes which are taught and attended by anyone who wants to share, learn, and participate; the Bread and Roses Library, which features hundreds of handmade books, also known as “zines” a public access computer lab which is set up with wireless internet and useful software; and an ongoing indoor murals project."

CAMP is basically what michael and i have always dreamt of doing...and probaly will end up doing later on in our life. so it's exciting to see how these guys are doing it and learn as much as we can.

i found a bird-lovely beautiful tea towel at a local antique store and turned it into this:

spring break 2008!!