Vice President of Advancement Sandra George said the AYF welcomed three talented creators to spend one to two weeks on site this summer, teaching interest groups to campers and working on their own art.

“This new program is designed for creative professionals to share their passion and expertise with our campers and staff,” George said.

At Merrowvista, mosaic artist Lizz Van Saun took up a one-week residency and worked with campers to create their own small-scale mosaic pieces.

“I think everyone had fun,” Van Saun said. “Everyone felt successful. Everyone completed the project. They seemed to really love it a lot. And I think they were really proud of what they did.”

At Miniwanca, artist and Lake Michigan neighbor Jeffrey Meeuwsen recruited the camp’s two artists this summer: Yolanda Gonzalez and Regin Igloria.

 

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Gonzalez specializes in illustration, fine art, printmaking, and painting. She helped campers design and carve their own printmaking blocks. Gonzalez said it was fun to then watch the campers use each other’s blocks to come up with patterns that they printed on fabric headbands.

She said she had no idea what to expect out of this unique residency but enjoyed immersing herself in camp life. “There’s just something special about the joy that you get from the community there,” she said. “I’m still making artwork from the experience. I think that’s really special, when there’s just a whole lot of intensity for those two weeks and you just want to create more and more afterwards.”

 

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Igloria said he has participated in about eight other residencies across the country and overseas, so he was excited to find an experience different from anything he had done.

Igloria specializes in artistic bookbinding and describes himself as a multidisciplinary artist mostly focusing on drawings and collages. He hosted introduction classes to creating zines and bookmaking.

“It was nice to just jump in, throw a couple of techniques and concepts at the campers, and see where they went,” Igloria said.

“And what always tends to happen when I introduce books to people who have never made books – which is a really wonderful thing – is that they want to give it to somebody they love and care about as a gift, so they put all this time, effort, and energy into it.”

Meeuwsen will continue to assist the Minwianca team as it plans and designs its own centennial artworks at Girls Camp and Boys Camp. All three artists said they’re excited to see where the residency program grows from here. “The framework and overarching premise of an encouraging environment is already in place, so it lends itself well to this,” Van Saun said.

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The American Youth Foundation strives to preserve, restore, and renovate existing buildings, but Senior Director of Infrastructure Andy Mulcahy said Miniwanca’s shifting sand dunes made the Fellowship Building and Assembly unsafe to use. After much deliberation, the AYF made the difficult decision to take down both structures.

Built in 1951, the Fellowship Building was perched on a steep hillside and once served as a central meeting spot for leaders. “Before the building’s decommission, the Facilities Team saw an opportunity to preserve its legacy by carefully removing the building’s fireplace stones, which came from each of the 50 states,” Mulcahy said. “We have securely stored them for future use elsewhere at Miniwanca.”

The spirit of fellowship lives on at that site. The facilities team replaced the structure with a large open deck overlooking Stony Creek, allowing campers to experience quiet moments of small group connection and conversation.

Mulcahy said significant structural issues over time caused the nearly 100-year-old Assembly building to lean precariously. Miniwanca took down the structure in spring 2022 but preserved the Assembly fireplace and mill stone.

“We know how important these historic structures are to our Miniwanca Founder Family,” Mulcahy said. “We hope to honor their legacies by repurposing key parts of the original buildings to create new spaces for youth to explore and enjoy for decades to come.”

At Merrowvista, the facilities team renovated existing structures to make them more welcoming to youth. They renovated a Super BIFF (Bathroom in the Friendly Forest) that includes showers and restrooms for use by all participants, as well as single-stall, gender-neutral spaces for transgender and gender-expansive participants.

They also made living spaces more comfortable for onsite staff. They added a lower-level egress to the apartment below the Health Center and completed a gut rehab of the Treehouse, which includes a staff apartment above the camp pottery studio and commercial laundry space. Even the youngest community members saw improvements this year, as the Scout Village classroom was refreshed to create a more child-friendly space for staff children.

Work at Merrowvista continued during the summer as older Wayfinder campers embraced new challenges through service-learning projects under the supervision of Facilities Infrastructure Manager Adam “Boots” Smetana.

Session A Wayfinders carefully took down the aging structure that housed the camp bell, whose clangs signal the day’s activities. They constructed a sturdy platform as the base for the new bell tower, then followed Smetana into the woods, where they felled trees to support a new metal roof.

Session B Wayfinders donned their hardhats and got to work on a log cabin on the A-field that interns built in the 1990s. Campers took it down to the studs and rebuilt the structure from the foundation up, adding and staining logs, creating and installing floors, and adding a new roof.

Smetana said these campers left Merrowvista with so much more than practical skills. “The Wayfinder program gives campers the chance to truly be of service to the Merrowvista community and to contribute to the future camp experiences of others,” he said.

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We recorded the webinar for those who weren’t able to make it. We hope it provides insight into the AYF’s progress toward creating powerful, inclusive, transformational program communities at Merrowvista and Miniwanca.

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