WHEN ASKED HOW activity was picking up in preparation for Camp, my succinct response has been "every bed will be full." Pause. "But literally. There will not be a free bed on Campus."

After weeks of volunteers and staff moving furniture in dormitories, organizing supplies in Yaw Art Center, hanging sheetrock in the Odess Theater, the long-anticipated week of Middle School Camp has at last arrived. We have three hundred campers, faculty, and staff staying in our dormitories, and just enough wiggle room to lodge three musicians arriving for Jazz on the Waterfront next weekend. It may seem strange to discuss the Sitka Fine Arts Camp in terms of bodies in beds, but a carpenter can confirm that it takes a hammer and nails to build a 'home.' We appreciate capacity building in the concrete terms of roofs and shingles, and every bed on campus is a symbol of the camper who will be able to experience the magic of Camp or the faculty member who will bring their expertise to Sitka to teach and inspire.

As a first-time witness to this "whole-Camp-thing," I can attest that this place is casually bursting at the seams with Art. As if to embody this point, the Camp shirt this year is an unassuming grey with the word "Artist" emblazoned matter-of-factly across the chest. As someone who has never identified as an artist, this made me uncomfortable. So uncomfortable that I looked up the precise definition of Art, and thank you Oxford dictionary for providing me with something I can relate to: Art is "the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination...producing works to be appreciated for their beauty or emotional power." 

It is a point of pride of the Sitka Fine Arts Camp that program-admission is not merit-based. This foundation supports the belief that everyone can be an artist. To be an artist is to act with the intention of creating something of value greater than the physical, something more than oil on canvas or air blowing over reeds. Similarly, revitalized facilities are more than an assembly of lumber. They are the physical and artistic representation of the passion that volunteers felt for both the history and the future of this Campus. In merging campus revitalization with the Sitka Fine Arts Camp's longer tradition, they have created a place where all artists - from the child in her first music class to the seasoned cellist - can come home.