Lyra Ingmire, 13, of Marquette works on her cardboard car on Monday at the Cardboard Art/Insanity Maker Place, or CAMP. The campers are spending the week on their special creations, plus fitting in a few trips to Marquette’s South Beach. (Journal photo by Christie Mastric)

MARQUETTE — Some campers make beaded necklaces, while others build campfires and go on hikes.

Local youngsters are spending their camp time immersed in a cardboard world.

The Cardboard Art/Insanity Maker Place, or CAMP, is going on this week in Marquette at the upper level of the former Carpenters Local 1510 building at 1221 Division St., which now is being used as art studio space. The first day camp session is going on this week, with future sessions planned for Aug. 14-18 and Aug. 21-25 for youngsters ages 9 to 14.

Leading the sessions is local artist and educator Amber Dohrenwend, who builds costumes, sculptures and installations out of cardboard.

That medium, if you want to call it that, is the focus of the day camp.

“They work with cardboard in a variety of different ways with a variety of different tools,” Dohrenwend said. “They working on a project called ‘art cars.’ They’re using wooden pallets as a base that will have caster wheels attached, and they’re building a cardboard frame on top of that, that’s kind of like a ‘fantasy car.'”

CAMP, though, is not all about inside cardboard work. Youngsters also take swim breaks at Marquette’s South Beach.

In fact, they will mix that outdoorsy setting with their art cars.

Dohrenwend said the youngsters will take their cars on Friday to South Beach to parade in the community. They also will put on a car show with costuming for their parents in the art space that day.

“I think this activity is interesting because they’re using a variety of different materials,” Dohrenwend said of the camp cars. “There are boxes of every kind.”

The youngsters also are using cardboard tubes, paper crate materials, paper string and paper tapes made of mostly recycled and recyclable materials, she said.

She acknowledged that learning how to fabricate with those materials can be challenging.

“We’re using a few very basic tools — the drills and drivers — and then we use turkey-carving tools for cutting through the cardboards, and we also have some plain tools for them to cut cardboards, some roofing shears,” Dohrenwend said. “Some of the harder stuff I cut with a jigsaw.”

Painting cars was underway, although that was in the beginning stages.

“They’re just getting started, so they’re laying down the base, but they’re really starting to face some of those challenges of stabilizing some of the different elements of the art car, and then probably later in the week, they’ll do more decorative work,” she said.

Using a variety of different tools in a creative way is one of the goals of the camp, she said.

“A lot of them have been building a narrative around their car,” Dohrenwend said, with some youngsters talking about role playing while the car is rolling.

“It just makes it a lot more fun and exciting than maybe just if they were just doing a straight engineering challenge,” she said. “All the engineering is incorporated, and then they have the ability to express themselves artistically and creatively, and kind of bring it to life that way.”

Lyra Ingmire, 13, of Marquette spent part of Monday afternoon visualizing what she wanted for her car. She had made a woven basket, and was working on “eyes” for the door.

“I’m just getting them laid out, getting them drawn out, and cutting them out,” Ingmire said. “I really want it to look as close to the picture as possible, but to also just be a little bit more intricate — and awkward.”

Dohrenwend said a few openings are available for the last session. For more information, visit www.thecardboardcollective.com.

Christie Mastric can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 550. Her email address is cbleck@miningjournal.net.