SPOTLIGHT ON THE ARTS
CAMP Rehoboth Puts Art at the Heart of Our Community
FEST ART 2024! Opens at CAMP Rehoboth
CAMP Rehoboth is thrilled to announce that FEST ART 2024! is on display in the gallery from April 26 to May 31, 2024. Held in conjunction with CAMP Rehoboth’s Women’s FEST, this juried exhibition celebrates women in the arts; it is one of CAMP Rehoboth’s largest community arts exhibitions of the year.
The juror for FEST ART 2024! is Washington, DC artist Joey P. Mánlapaz. She is an accomplished contemporary realist painter recognized for her multifaceted roles as painter, educator, curator and juror of art exhibitions, and advocate for the elderly through art. “It was a pleasure to jury the entries,” says Mánlapaz. “I was impressed by the variety of media and imagery and tried to represent that for the exhibition.”
Thirty-eight artworks by 33 artists were selected to highlight the diversity of artistic styles and themes. Mánlapaz was also inclusive of multiple mediums and art forms.
The talented artists are from throughout Delaware, as well as Florida, Maryland, New Jersey, South Carolina, and Washington, DC, and include: Karen Abato, Nancy Allen, Sondra N. Arkin, Michelle Bailey, Dan Bartasavich, Carol Bell, Pat Catanzariti, Richard Collins, Dierra Cooper, Sharon Denny, Lorraine Dey, Geri Dibiase, Sheila Exum, Logan Farro, Kiara Florez, Missy Gentile, Theresa Kehrer, Jane Knaus, Misty L. Letts, Amanda Lind, Michelle Mallon, Sharon Marquart, Carissa Beth Meiklejohn, Amy B. Nestor, Fran Panzo, Bev Pasquarella, Deb Payette, Lorraine Quinn, Samantha Scullen, Coca Silveira, R Stiles, Sabina Troncone, and Holly Wynn.
An opening reception, on April 26, from 2:00 to 4:00, is free, and no RSVP is required. The reception provides an opportunity to engage directly with the artists and their work. Or stop by the gallery Monday through Friday, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., to view the exhibition. ▼
Why the Arts Matter
I am delighted to follow in Doug Yetter’s footsteps as a contributor to CAMP Arts in Letters from CAMP Rehoboth. Starting this, my first column, I couldn’t help but come back to one central question: Why do the arts matter?
Sure, arts and culture constitute one of CAMP Rehoboth’s four primary pillars; from its outset, the arts have mattered at CAMP. And they matter to me personally, as both my passion and my livelihood. But why should they matter to you—or to all of us?
I believe that a connection to the arts doesn’t just strengthen us as individuals. It strengthens our communities and hence, strengthens our society as a whole. There are intrinsic and communal benefits to the arts, and when the two collide, we are collectively enriched by that impact.
First, the intrinsic. The arts are, by their very nature, a creative endeavor. Whether on a canvas, on a page, or on a stage, the arts ask their creators to imagine, to interpret, and to discern. Artists translate a lived or imagined experience into something they can share. Is it color and light? Is it a sense of movement? Is it an idea? A sound? A feeling?
Now, artists are not a special class of people. We are all capable of this kind of creativity. Some scientists say that it’s literally in our species’ DNA. Is it a coincidence that the first examples of “representational art”—the cave paintings in Lascaux France 30,000 years ago—coincide with the rise of communal homo sapien society? Did being human make us create art? Or did creating art make us human?
Part of being human is cultivating a shared hope for the future. We can’t prove the arts did that for those ancient ancestors, but we can see their impact today and perhaps extrapolate.
A recent study of inner-city middle school students given access to live theater revealed one startling difference between those randomly assigned to see four live plays and their non-theatergoing peers: theater attendees were consistently able to envision a future unconstrained by their current circumstances. Researchers acknowledged this capacity was the closest thing they could measure to the idea of “hope.”
Did going to the theater really help change how young people thought about their future? There is a theory that says repeated exposure to theater helped them attempt to guess the future of the characters on stage, based on their actions during each play. As young people learned that many pathways can unfold based on decisions for a character in a play, perhaps they learned, in turn, that their own futures were not predetermined by their present circumstances. Hope for a better future wasn’t a dream; it was something they could impact through their choices.
This takes me from the intrinsic benefit of the arts to the communal. For those students, the changes observed were collective as well as individual. That’s true for us adults as well. The performing arts are one of the few places left in our society where people from completely different lived experiences can sit shoulder to shoulder, gasp together, laugh together, and (this is scientifically proven) even have their hearts come to beat in sync together.
It is my belief that those shared experiences help us to recognize our common humanity. Strangers sitting next to us who seemed different from us when the show began are no longer as different once we have shared that one thing in common. Now, we have something to talk about together. Soon, the things that make us alike begin to loom larger than the things that made us perceive we were different. And the things that are different about us can become things we value and appreciate.
If it can start that way in a single performance at the theater, imagine the ripple effect of that for our whole society. Imagine a society whose people see hope and potential in the future and who see the strangers around them as potential friends and neighbors.
That’s the kind of society I’d like to live in. And it’s the kind of community that CAMP Rehoboth has envisioned since its founding. ▼
Leslie Sinclair is a member of the Delaware State Arts Council and a passionate leader of CAMP Rehoboth’s visual arts programs.
Joe Gfaller is Managing Director of Clear Space Theatre.
Photo: Hulki Okan Tabak on Unsplash.