A Summer of Creative Exploration
This summer, young artists across the Comox Valley spent their days painting with handmade brushes, making movies in the forest, building imagined worlds, and discovering that art can begin with a question just as easily as a paintbrush.
Our 2026 Summer Art Camps were built around curiosity, experimentation, and creative risk-taking. Rather than focusing on perfect finished pieces, campers were invited to explore new materials, follow unexpected ideas, and create work that reflected their own perspectives. Every camp had its own theme, but together they formed one joyful, art-filled summer.
Art in Relationship with the Land
Our first week invited campers to slow down, look closely, and create alongside the natural world.
With Elke, younger campers spent their days exploring the forest, sketching each morning, collecting organic materials, creating tree bark rubbings, experimenting with cyanotype prints, and building imagined forest habitats from clay and paint. Throughout the week, they brought these discoveries together into a large collaborative forest inspired by everything they had observed.
Meanwhile, Natalia encouraged older campers to experiment with a variety of materials and techniques while exploring the forest in their own way. Through daily sketchbook prompts, clay miniatures, found materials, and paintings made back in the studio, they created a collaborative mural that reflected their shared experience of the landscape.
Art + Play
Our second week embraced imagination, experimentation, and the joy of making without worrying about getting it “right.”
With Elke, younger campers stepped outside the studio and into the forest, where nature became both inspiration and collaborator. They created handmade paintbrushes from gathered natural materials, painted shadow-inspired murals, experimented with string painting, and discovered how art can begin with paying attention.
Meanwhile, Natalia guided older campers through daily sketchbook prompts, playful colour theory experiments, polymer clay sculptures, personal 3D artworks celebrating the things that mattered most to them, and vibrant tissue-paper installations that celebrated creativity without fear of making mistakes.
Seeing Differently
Our Seeing Differently camps invited campers to look at the world from new perspectives.
With Avery, younger campers imagined life through the eyes of animals, created their own forest films, and brought clay creatures to life through stop-motion animation.
Meanwhile, Laurena encouraged older campers to experiment with layered materials and personal creative processes, creating mixed-media artworks that reflected how differently each artist approached the same creative challenge.
Future Worlds
We closed the summer by looking toward tomorrow.
Younger campers, led by Avery, created a collaborative dystopian film where friendship became the force that could save the world. They designed costumes from recycled materials, built miniature sets, developed characters and dialogue, and worked together to bring their imagined future to the screen.
Older campers, guided by Laurena, built entire worlds of their own. Through dioramas, terrariums, imagined creatures, futuristic architecture, and planets ruled by animals, they created layered narratives about the futures they wanted to invent and the stories those worlds would hold.
More Than Art Projects
Looking back, what stands out most isn’t just the paintings, films, sculptures, and installations. It’s the confidence that grew alongside them.
Campers collaborated on big ideas, solved creative problems together, experimented with unfamiliar materials, and discovered that there are countless ways to make art. They learned that a forest can become a film set, a shadow can become a painting, and a handful of recycled materials can become the beginning of a whole new world.
A huge thank you goes to our incredible teaching artists Elke, Natalia, Avery, and Laurena, whose creativity and care shaped every week of camp. Thank you as well to all of the families who trusted us with their young artists this summer and to every camper who arrived ready to imagine, experiment, and create.
We couldn’t have asked for a better first season of CV/Arts Summer Art Camps.
Curious what next summer might look like? Stay tuned for 2027 Summer Art Camp registration.
