This is a special project. For me, it’s meaningful and refreshing.

Last summer, I was volunteering in Camp Max Struas, Los Angeles as an arts & crafts specialist, teaching inner city children painting, drawing, ceramics, origami and other art related activities. Besides that, I was requested to make a plaque each week to recognize the participants, which had been a history of the camp for about 100 years. The last person who did this job has been doing it for more than 20 years, however, he left right before I joined.

I had no clue how tough, interesting, amazing, and privileged it would be, until the first plaque presented in front of people; I had a feeling that I’m born to do this task! The camp director didn’t give me any limitation and all the people were trusting me; the only requirement is to put “CMS” there letters and “The Order of Arrowhead” a traditional phrase on it. All the plaques were designed and painted with acrylic by me, which I had no previous experiences. All I knew was I should make something different…

What I have done were:

These were my first and second plaques. Every week the camp has a theme, and I decided to have the plaques connected with that as well. The first week was Games, I didn’t have much experiences regarding how and with what procedures to paint in the beginning, and I have never painted on a piece of wood either; but I tended to make it colorful and creative. Luckily, it turned out not bad, and people liked it. The second week was about Old Times, and that week kids had performed a play about knight too, which was where my inspiration came from.

The third week was Harry Porter, and all the kids were divided into different “schools” like what was happening in the books. So I tried to make it as Gothic as possible, because of its magical and mysterious style. The forth one was the most excited Olympic Week. (Since there’s a 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the camp had a camp-wise Games too.) I was planning to inject the Five Rings in it, but I didn’t really want to borrow the original arrangement. So I made such innovative Five Ring as background with the original color on them.

The fifth week’s theme was Toys that had made me thought for a long time about what to put on the plaque, because there’re so many kinds of toys and I could somehow paint whatsoever! But what I could think of was HAPPY and JOY. Isn’t it true that all the toy can make us happy?! So I created a kinda abstract person’s face as the background, apparently, he’s very very happy. The next theme was Time Travel, yah, I just borrowed Wall-E’s eye to make it look like a robot anyway.

The last week was Super Hero, since I have to put CMS on it, I designed such “logo” to combine the theme of the week and the tradition. The last plaque I made was for ALL OF US, the camp councilors, since we were all cool, I made it black; since we were all loving kids with hearts, I made a heart; since we are all from everywhere, I made it colorful inside as well; I also made a very abstract CMS in the top.

That’s it. All the letters on the plaques were the kids’ initials. All the the plaques are hanging on the wall the dining hall, and they would be there forever and ever.

Because of this, I was awarded as the “Most Liked” staff member of whole summer !