Ecology Haunted House Camp

MON, SEP 30 - FRI, OCT 4 | 9AM-4PM DAILY | Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Ocean Springs, MS

Calling Pascagoula-Gautier middle school students for a FREE five-day art and science camp during the District's Fall Intercession. 

Free Registration includes drinks, snacks, and up to $150 travel stipend for mileage given at the end of the week. Lunch not included, so please bring your own!

Multidisciplinary artist Molly Shea works with students to construct Strange Planet, a haunted house inspired by ecological terrors that plague the coast. Projects include character construction, installation art, painting, and science-art hybrid practices.

Over the course of a weeklong engagement, students will construct an immersive nature-inspired installation at the Walter Anderson Museum of Art that creates a contained space for meditation, reflection, and performance. Inspired by Walter Anderson’s mural-covered “Little Room”—the artist’s private space that conceptualized a never-ending day through a kaleidoscopic composition of coastal flora and fauna—Strange Planet encourages mindfulness and directed action in the face of uncertain climate threat. Strange Planet contains multi-dimensional and multimedia depictions of coastal landscapes, animals, and plants, informed by conversations with naturalists, scientists, and community advocates. Once constructed, the public will be invited to enter and interact with the structure, further activated through student performances and community dialogue.

“I am continuously arriving from some strange planet and everything I see is new and strange. When I feel the beauty of a flower or the trunk of a tree I am at once inducted into a world of three dimensions and have a sense of form which is the opposite of artificial forms and conventions.” —Walter Inglis Anderson (1903-1965)

About the artist

Molly Jo Shea (b. 1989) is a first generation Los Angelino, now living in Mississippi. She is a performer, ceramicist, and part-time con man. She received her master’s degree at Cal Arts in integrated media in 2019 and her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in sculpture and new media. When she is not trying to learn how to fish by the casinos in Biloxi, she’s training to squash watermelons with her thighs and is Miss Information at the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art.

Made possible with funding from the National Academy of Sciences and Ingalls Shipbuilding.