A chance to X-press the inner artist

Five days. Five art forms. A million memories.

One hundred and fifty students from throughout Orange County were nominated by their teachers to participate in a one-of-a-kind arts experience in the Pacific Symphony’s arts-X-press program.

The five-day summer arts immersion program gives middle-schoolers the chance to stay in a dorm at Vanguard University, forming close bonds that help them to get out of their comfort zones and try out new media.

“Our goal while they’re here is to have them exposed to all five art forms,” camp manager Molly Buzick said, including visual art, vocal and instrumental music, dance and theater.

The program was created in 2001 by the symphony’s conductor, Carl St. Clair, and his wife Susan — in honor of their son Cole Carsan St. Claire, who tragically drowned as a toddler in 1999.

Each of the three 50-student summer sessions has its own theme; this week’s is Color. St. Clair makes a personal appearance at each of the sessions, often near his Laguna Beach home.

Students spend the week preparing for a family exhibition of their newfound skills.

“But what distinguishes us from many other camps is our focus on the creative process, not the end product,” Buzick said.

Each student is assigned one art form to focus on during daily workshops, while also given the chance to dabble in all the other forms.

Campers are encouraged to take risks, as they are given no grades.

“I can’t believe some of the limbs that these kids will go out on,” Buzick said.

This week’s dancers are learning the moonwalk, while singers are performing opera. The theater group will perform a dramatization of “Where the Wild Things Are.”

The students also have time each day during Creative Expressions sessions to journal and write poetry about their experiences.

“It’s really wonderful for us to see what’s inside their heads,” Creative Expressions instructor Claire Purcell said.

She and her colleagues are schoolteachers during the school year, and said the summer experience is refreshing because their charges aren’t worried about being graded, or holding back because of peers they’ve known their whole lives.

They also go on many excursions throughout the county to view live art installations and productions, from a Frank Sinatra tribute at the Laguna Playhouse to Newport Beach’s annual summer Shakespearean plays.

Monday night, they went to the Festival of Arts and Pageant of the Masters in Laguna Beach.

Each student can only participate once in their life, but many previous campers come back as volunteers.

The counselors share dorm suites with their students, and eat and interact with them throughout the entire session.

“One of our principal goals is constant interaction,” Buzick said. “We don’t have that kind of staff-student divide that you might see elsewhere.”

“I knew right away that I wanted to come back as a counselor,” Fullerton College student and arts-X-press counselor Mohammad Jaffrey said. “I’ve been looking forward to this all summer. It reminds me that you can spark interest in kids and make a difference, because it changed my life so much.”

Jaffrey said the experience showed him that no matter what he chooses for a career, he can still keep the arts in his life.

Esteban Ortiz, 12, concurs. The Costa Mesa camper wants to come back and be a counselor when he gets older, and then plans to attend Harvard University and be a lawyer.

Esteban said he felt lucky to live somewhere where the arts and music are universally appreciated.

Buzick said Newport-Mesa Unified students like Esteban are the most represented in the countywide camp, with the highest number of kids who are accepted and attend.

She added that the efforts of the district’s school foundation, and administrators like Bonnie Swann and Scott Fitzpatrick at the district, have been crucial to the success of the arts-X-press program.

She said her favorite moment of camp, which she hears dozens of times a day, is when a student comments that they didn’t think they could act, sing or dance, until they came to arts-X-press.