Second day of camp session with guest artist Madelyn Cage from IU’ s Eskenazi Museum of Art. photo by Cindy Steele
ART CAMP with Amanda Mathis
~ by Brian Blair
Amanda Mathis doesn’ t frame her art classes with students’ traditional meditative stillness. On a recent resplendent June afternoon outside at the Brown County Art Gallery, she gathered 25 wired enrollees in her youth art camp for a stroll toward creativity— at a nearby cemetery.
The idea was to allow young people, from second through fifth grade, to find inspiring art in some unlikely places, and to burn off some of their hyperkinetic energy.
“ This is definitely a summer camp,” she said referring to the daylong sessions stretching over five days.
A camp for an older group of young people is also offered in July for sixth graders through age 16.
The offerings began in 2017 for the youngsters before spreading three years ago to senior adults, too.“ And it’ s not school,” she said. The Indiana Artisan, and member of the Brown County Art Gallery Association, is a well-known Brown County“ educated primitive” artist, as she puts it, and is big on teaching discovery and wonder in her sessions.
16 Our Brown County July / August 2026
Artist Amanda Mathis on the first day of camp. photo by Brian Blair