KIDS MIXED MEDIA & ALTERNATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY CAMP
Mixed Media & Alternative Photography
with Leslie Banta & Cary Oliva
for one week 9AM-4PM, June 1st - June 4th (Monday-Thursday only)
arts-eager and usually self-directed 8-12 yr. olds
$315
During this Monday–Thursday all-day camp from 9-4 with an hour lunch and play break, students will be introduced to a variety of mixed media forms of art and alternative photography techniques. Throughout the week, they’ll explore printmaking, collage, and expressive mark-making, experimenting with texture, layering, and composition. Campers will design and carve their own stamps, create repeat patterns, and apply their designs to projects like handmade cards, custom gift wrap, and finished artworks.
In addition to mixed media, students will be introduced to alternative photography processes that encourage creativity and curiosity—such as cyanotypes, photo-based transfers, and camera-less image making. Emphasis will be placed on exploration, problem-solving, and developing a personal artistic voice, all within a supportive and engaging studio environment. By the end of the week, each student will leave with a collection of unique, handcrafted pieces and a deeper understanding of creative processes they can continue to build on.
Price includes all supplies.
Limited to 6 students with plenty of personal attention.
Mixed Media with Leslie from 9AM-12PM
Mixed media explorations with printmaking, collage & mark-making: Create unique stamps and patterns for gift wrap, cards or finished art.
LUNCH & PLAY OUTSIDE: 12PM-1PM
Alternative Photography with Cary from 1PM-4PM
Explore different techniques with Polaroid photography (manipulating, marking, cutting apart and putting back together, coloring), transfers using Gelli plates, cyanotypes, anthotypes and possibly leaf printing (weather-permitting).
Doors open 10 minutes beforehand and kids must be picked up 4:10 at the latest. No exceptions.
Leslie Banta is an Alabama native, having spent formative years in a creative family. With an architect dad and artist, entrepreneur and art educator mom, she could hardly choose any undergrad major but studio art. She focused her creative energies into a BFA degree in oil painting and earned a P-12 certificate in art education from Birmingham-Southern College; she graduated with honors and was given The Phyllis M. Nielsen Senior Book Award for Outstanding Performance in Student Teaching.
With a dream of focusing on a painting career, she moved to the DC area where Art Mentor Joyce McCarten guided her to begin exhibiting in the DC area. Leslie explored new abstract methods, taking courses at The Torpedo Factory in Alexandria's Old Town and at The Corcoran's Georgetown campus, where she was awarded the Linda Rosenbaum Scholarship to continue her studies. She was fortunate to take abstract drawing and painting classes under the direction of fellow Tuscaloosa, AL native, Bill Christenberry and to work with collage guru, Mindy Weisel. Leslie traveled to Provence, France to better study "colour" and plein air landscapes with British artist Richard Kenton Webb.
Leslie established a studio discipline and painting business while the usual life distractions ebbed and flowed: working a graphic design day job, becoming a wife and mom, owning and operating a retail fine art supply store for nine years in downtown Staunton, VA, and teaching in local schools and art studios.
Cary Oliva is originally from Virginia, having grown up in a small community near the water. Feeling there was more out there to be explored, she was lucky enough to study abroad in high school, spending her junior year studying art in Italy and continued taking classes there also her junior year of college having earned her BA in Italian Studies and Fine Art from Dickinson College. After college, Cary lived in New York City where she learned about 35mm photography and more alternative techniques and started experimenting with Polaroid manipulations & transfers. She found both techniques completely additive and hasn’t stopped playing around with those and other alternative techniques since! She has exhibited her work in numerous shows around Virginia, has taught adults and kids both art and Italian, enjoys taking classes herself, cats & most animals as well as traveling with her artist-husband with whom she started The Workshop at Timber Ridge in 2024 after spending a year and a half project managing the renovation of the dirt-floor horse barn. She and Judd love their new/old home in the Shenandoah Valley and look forward to continuing to welcoming new students to The Workshop!
REGISTER BELOW!
