This week culminates 40 consecutive years in which an art-loving and art-living Toledo couple has provided summer art and crafts classes on site at their rural property for area children and youth.
Originally operating the classes from a doublewide pre-fabricated building, Mike and Di Morgan built their Morgan Arts Centre building in 1998. Subsequently, with a much larger space, the summer lessons continued to evolve.
About 10 years ago, it officially became known as Camp Picasso.
About a dozen students are attending the art camp this year, ranging in age from early elementary school to early teens. Each year, the two-week camp exposes attendees to a variety of art lessons, such as painting, printmaking, throwing or hand-building pottery, tie-dyeing, collage-making, and drawing.
Along the way, students learn art basics such as color theory and major art movements and styles.
The curriculum and every aspect of running the summer camp is created and managed jointly by Mike and Di.
Their many years of collaborative efforts in the arts have forged them into a singular love of creativity, where they share the workload and bounce ideas between each other.
“Every aspect of Camp Picasso is designed and carried out by both of us, together,” Di said. “Or, put another way, Mike often has fun, crazy art ideas, and I feed the crazy.”
Both are retired teachers from the local school district, having moved to Toledo in 1973. For 30 years, Mike taught a wide range of art as well as world cultures in the middle and upper grades, and for 31 years, Di taught in elementary school. Following retirement, both served as substitute teachers for a few years.
The summer art classes began when their son Jake and daughter Katie were elementary school age. Jake, a web and graphics designer who lives at Toledo, has provided general assistance with Camp Picasso for the past 10 years as well as leading the tie-dye workshops.
“What’s especially great is to see some of my classmates now have their own kids attending the camp,” he said.
Also assisting this year is Eleanor Pomeroy, 13, formerly of Castle Rock, who attended for four years and is now serving as the camp intern.
“I really liked Camp Picasso so I kept coming,” she said, adding, “it’s just perfect; when you’re here, you can really be a kid again.”
Each activity connects to another.
During “art safari,” camp attendees ran around the grounds to find small art objects the Morgans had hidden. Holding a list and sporting their bright tie-dyed tee shirts, each student had 20 minutes to locate as many objects as possible. A shriek of joy marked each time something was found. Coming inside, the students then wrote about their findings in their new art journals.
As an exercise in color theory, students manipulated colorful balls of cookie dough enhanced by food coloring in the primary colors of red, yellow and blue to learn about secondary and complementary colors. They later enjoyed eating these creations.
Married for 56 years, the Morgans moved to Toledo in 1973 where they began teaching and participating in community activities. Mike creates art in various mediums with his works often serving as social or political commentary. Di is a fiber artist, with some of her materials having been sourced during the couple’s overseas travels.
“Art is important, but what’s most important to me is community life and community service,” Mike said. “To me, art is creativity, and that becomes part of what I do in the community.”
Aside from running the summer art camp over the years, for 19 years at their art center they coordinated an annual children’s summer theater production and for 10 years the former Plomondon Independent Film Festival.
Among those perhaps slightly crazy artful ideas is the cheeseball drop, conceived and developed a few years ago by Mike as an annual New Year’s Eve community event.
He built a giant cheeseball from papier mache on a wire foundation, then wound lights around it and gathered area residents to celebrate its midnight fall near the town’s Cowlitz River landing.
The New Year’s cheeseball drop now consists of an oversize beachball covered entirely in lights with wrapped single cheeses from the Toledo Cheese Depot taped all over it.
Volunteers from various community services provide barrel warming fires, music and a large outdoor video show depicting community events that occurred throughout the year. Well attended, at midnight the ball drops dramatically from a large crane and attendees race to gather the scattered fallen cheeses.
Mike and Di continue to coordinate the event, and together they also support area events at their Steamboat Landing community center and locally made art at their Gallery 505.
Mike currently leads the Toledo Historical Society, is active in the Toledo Lion’s Club, and is president of the regional ARTrails nonprofit. He served on the Lewis County Planning Commission for 17 years and recently retired from 11 years’ service on the Toledo Parks Board.
He is one of the founders of both Vision: TOLEDO and the community’s annual Cheese Days festival.
Di remains fully involved in community activities of these organizations, as well as serving on the county’s lodging tax committee and as a volunteer at the Toledo library.
Plans for the day’s Camp Picasso, or any of the many other activities each is involved in, start with sitting and drinking coffee together each morning.
“Talking with each other about what each of us is doing that day is important. Such communication is part of what makes a long, successful marriage,” Mike said. “Unfortunately, not all couples do that.”
“It’s also about finding the positives in what the other person has done, and saying something positive about it,” Di said, adding, “For all that we do to support community life, there’s very little I’d give up because I enjoy doing everything.”
