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Arts Camp Bucks Team-Think Trend
Reprinted from Popular Sinus Magazine, September 2009
Summer Camp for Young Artists Bucks Trend Towards Team-Think
To the casual observer, Camp Iaman Island looks like any other summer resort for children. The site nestled in sixty acres of Adirondack forest features rustic cabins and horse barns, a great stone main building, and a grassy expanse that one might assume to be a sports field. In the center of the field is a prominent flagpole with a black banner bearing the camp’s motto, “Izhichigen”.
But this is not your average summer camp. For starters, the name of Camp Iaman Island is unconventional, as the only water on this land-locked property is a fetid slough of oily sludge known as Elbow Creek. And the camp’s motto is an Ojibwan word that means, roughly, “Don’t count on it.”
Indeed the whole mission of this camp goes contrary to contemporary concepts of the values that a summer camp should instill in young people. That is because Iaman Island is a camp for aspiring young artists, ages 6 to 14 years of age. It was inspired by one man’s fear that many of the traits that have served artists so well for eons are in danger of being socialized out of America’s youths.
Camp founder and chairman, Lars Potney, formerly an artist-in-residence at Manhattan’s posh Willowick Academy for Deluxe Children, said that he noticed a profound attitude shift during the mid 1990’s. Potney described a seminal event that moved him to create the camp.
“One day I gave my art students the standard assignment of expressing ‘irony’ using nothing but egg shells and shirt buttons. Pretty basic stuff, right? Well, the next thing I know, the kids had taken it upon themselves to work as a team. They had elected a captain, two vice presidents, a morale officer, a secretary of diversity, a minister of aesthetics, a sensitivity czar, a director of marketing, three general managers, a Pilates coach, and a publicist. And they produced the worst crap I’d ever seen in 17 years of teaching art. That’s what you get when you tell kids that life is all about cooperation and success and optimism.
We’re raising a generation of little soccer-playing robots. Cheery, self-satisfied, Lunchables-munching twits. This pervasive team-think is going to be the death of art as we know it.”
Potney’s second in command, a dreary young woman who calls herself simply Camomile, expanded on that point. “I was Lars’ assistant at Willowick at the time and I remember looking at the kids working together and thinking, ‘Well that’s bizarre. I mean, like, what’s going on? They’re not acting like artists. Like, you know, where’s the anguish?’”
“Yeah, I was so disgusted, I quit right there on the spot,” Potney added.
“No. You were fired, Lars,” she corrected, “Later. You know, after…”
“Yeah, that’s right. Technically I was fired. And I was proud to be fired. It made me a better artist. I didn’t want to play that game anymore. Art isn’t about teamwork. Art is about solitude and suffering, self-doubt, self-loathing, and disappointment.”
Two years later, Potney opened Camp Iaman Island to bring to children what he thought was missing from their art experience. Parents are not allowed on the premises. Instead, the campers are deposited at a drop-off point about two miles down the road and are left to find their own way to the camp with nothing but a somewhat abstract, hand-painted map. When the campers reach Iaman Island, (and Potney insists that very nearly all of them do), they are each assigned their own little 8x8’garret space in the hayloft of the old horse barn. Campers are each furnished with a black T-shirt, a candle and a pack of matches, a pen knife, three sticks of drawing charcoal, a large tablet of newsprint, a tin drinking cup, two gallons of water, six tea bags, a jar of organic peanut butter, and a feral cat for companionship.
As one might expect, activities at Iaman Island don’t include the usual canoeing, horseback riding and archery. And you won’t hear any early morning bugle calls. On the day we visited, bleary-eyed campers were wandering into the Great Hall at around noon to enjoy cup after cup of espresso and listen to scratchy Odetta and Charlie Parker recordings from Potney’s vinyl LP collection. Those youngsters who required a more substantial morning meal were free to help themselves from boxes of cold leftover pizza in the galley fridge.
At about 2:30pm, the campers are encouraged to attend “vocational craft” sessions where the budding artists may choose between washing the camp dishes, filling out dummy applications for non-existent fellowships, or driving Iaman Island’s vintage 1963 Checker cab up and down the county road, picking up and dropping off imaginary “fares”. At about 4:30, Camomile’s amplified sighs over the PA system signal that it’s time for “Introspection”. Campers find themselves a private spot in the woods where they spend the next hour lying on pine needles in the fetal position, contemplating how they might make themselves more misunderstood. At around 6:00pm, Camomile’s dulcimer strumming calls the youngsters in for the evening meal of organic produce salvaged from the dumpsters of trendy area restaurants. After dinner, and more coffee, campers retreat to their individual spaces where they sketch and draw into the wee hours of the night.
Actual artistic instruction is non-existent at Camp Iaman Island. Potney considers it an insult to give advice to an artist. “I remember what it was like as a kid to have nosey teachers, so-called artists, make a bunch of bourgeois suggestions about how I could improve my work. Hey, they weren’t in my head. They weren’t in my soul. And if they were so freaking smart, how come they were having to teach stupid kids to draw in order to make a living? Nah, I just provide them with the right environment and let ‘em go. Let ‘em express themselves without a bunch of annoying…guidance.”
Whether or not one agrees with Lars Potney’s approach, it’s hard to deny that the camp is a financial success. Despite the stunning $12,000 tuition fee for a seven-week session, Iaman Island is solidly booked through the summer of 2012. And Potney’s good fortunes are not limited to the summer months. In the off-season he operates his own gallery on the Upper East Side where he does a brisk business selling his very imaginative, and very pricey, charcoal drawings.
Summer Camp for Young Artists Bucks Trend Towards Team-Think
To the casual observer, Camp Iaman Island looks like any other summer resort for children. The site nestled in sixty acres of Adirondack forest features rustic cabins and horse barns, a great stone main building, and a grassy expanse that one might assume to be a sports field. In the center of the field is a prominent flagpole with a black banner bearing the camp’s motto, “Izhichigen”.
But this is not your average summer camp. For starters, the name of Camp Iaman Island is unconventional, as the only water on this land-locked property is a fetid slough of oily sludge known as Elbow Creek. And the camp’s motto is an Ojibwan word that means, roughly, “Don’t count on it.”
Indeed the whole mission of this camp goes contrary to contemporary concepts of the values that a summer camp should instill in young people. That is because Iaman Island is a camp for aspiring young artists, ages 6 to 14 years of age. It was inspired by one man’s fear that many of the traits that have served artists so well for eons are in danger of being socialized out of America’s youths.
Camp founder and chairman, Lars Potney, formerly an artist-in-residence at Manhattan’s posh Willowick Academy for Deluxe Children, said that he noticed a profound attitude shift during the mid 1990’s. Potney described a seminal event that moved him to create the camp.
“One day I gave my art students the standard assignment of expressing ‘irony’ using nothing but egg shells and shirt buttons. Pretty basic stuff, right? Well, the next thing I know, the kids had taken it upon themselves to work as a team. They had elected a captain, two vice presidents, a morale officer, a secretary of diversity, a minister of aesthetics, a sensitivity czar, a director of marketing, three general managers, a Pilates coach, and a publicist. And they produced the worst crap I’d ever seen in 17 years of teaching art. That’s what you get when you tell kids that life is all about cooperation and success and optimism.
We’re raising a generation of little soccer-playing robots. Cheery, self-satisfied, Lunchables-munching twits. This pervasive team-think is going to be the death of art as we know it.”
Potney’s second in command, a dreary young woman who calls herself simply Camomile, expanded on that point. “I was Lars’ assistant at Willowick at the time and I remember looking at the kids working together and thinking, ‘Well that’s bizarre. I mean, like, what’s going on? They’re not acting like artists. Like, you know, where’s the anguish?’”
“Yeah, I was so disgusted, I quit right there on the spot,” Potney added.
“No. You were fired, Lars,” she corrected, “Later. You know, after…”
“Yeah, that’s right. Technically I was fired. And I was proud to be fired. It made me a better artist. I didn’t want to play that game anymore. Art isn’t about teamwork. Art is about solitude and suffering, self-doubt, self-loathing, and disappointment.”
Two years later, Potney opened Camp Iaman Island to bring to children what he thought was missing from their art experience. Parents are not allowed on the premises. Instead, the campers are deposited at a drop-off point about two miles down the road and are left to find their own way to the camp with nothing but a somewhat abstract, hand-painted map. When the campers reach Iaman Island, (and Potney insists that very nearly all of them do), they are each assigned their own little 8x8’garret space in the hayloft of the old horse barn. Campers are each furnished with a black T-shirt, a candle and a pack of matches, a pen knife, three sticks of drawing charcoal, a large tablet of newsprint, a tin drinking cup, two gallons of water, six tea bags, a jar of organic peanut butter, and a feral cat for companionship.
As one might expect, activities at Iaman Island don’t include the usual canoeing, horseback riding and archery. And you won’t hear any early morning bugle calls. On the day we visited, bleary-eyed campers were wandering into the Great Hall at around noon to enjoy cup after cup of espresso and listen to scratchy Odetta and Charlie Parker recordings from Potney’s vinyl LP collection. Those youngsters who required a more substantial morning meal were free to help themselves from boxes of cold leftover pizza in the galley fridge.
At about 2:30pm, the campers are encouraged to attend “vocational craft” sessions where the budding artists may choose between washing the camp dishes, filling out dummy applications for non-existent fellowships, or driving Iaman Island’s vintage 1963 Checker cab up and down the county road, picking up and dropping off imaginary “fares”. At about 4:30, Camomile’s amplified sighs over the PA system signal that it’s time for “Introspection”. Campers find themselves a private spot in the woods where they spend the next hour lying on pine needles in the fetal position, contemplating how they might make themselves more misunderstood. At around 6:00pm, Camomile’s dulcimer strumming calls the youngsters in for the evening meal of organic produce salvaged from the dumpsters of trendy area restaurants. After dinner, and more coffee, campers retreat to their individual spaces where they sketch and draw into the wee hours of the night.
Actual artistic instruction is non-existent at Camp Iaman Island. Potney considers it an insult to give advice to an artist. “I remember what it was like as a kid to have nosey teachers, so-called artists, make a bunch of bourgeois suggestions about how I could improve my work. Hey, they weren’t in my head. They weren’t in my soul. And if they were so freaking smart, how come they were having to teach stupid kids to draw in order to make a living? Nah, I just provide them with the right environment and let ‘em go. Let ‘em express themselves without a bunch of annoying…guidance.”
Whether or not one agrees with Lars Potney’s approach, it’s hard to deny that the camp is a financial success. Despite the stunning $12,000 tuition fee for a seven-week session, Iaman Island is solidly booked through the summer of 2012. And Potney’s good fortunes are not limited to the summer months. In the off-season he operates his own gallery on the Upper East Side where he does a brisk business selling his very imaginative, and very pricey, charcoal drawings.
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