Plains Art Museum and NDSU team up for a Summer STEAM Camp for Youth
Press Release
For Immediate Release (July 2025)
Fargo, North Dakota – This summer Plains Art Museum is teaming up with North Dakota State University faculty to host a STEAM camp, where Science, Technology, Engineering, ARTS, and Mathematics come together to give students an exciting mix of scientific discovery and artistic exploration. Children ages 10-17 are invited to register for Summer STEAM Camp: Exploring Relationships between Vision Science and Photography: Your Eye is a Camera, August 4-8, 2025, from 1-3 p.m. Register at plainsart.org/create
In this week-long course, campers will explore human vision and photography using pinhole cameras as a way to connect science and art. The course is jointly taught by Ben Balas (NDSU Psychology) and Meghan Duda (NDSU Art & Design), who will guide students through the science of image formation in the eye and the practice of taking photographs with a pinhole camera. Participants will observe and explore the relationship between visual optics and photography by building and exploring models of the human eye and making images of their own.
Campers will learn about reflection, refraction and diffraction with red, green, and blue lasers, learn about the anatomy of the eye with pinhole cameras made from bakery boxes and Pringles tubes, and model the retina with sun print paper. Next, participants will use these simple models to make their own works of art in the photographic darkroom at NDSU’s Renaissance Hall. In this engaging, hands-on camp, participants will learn how observation and experimentation are part of science and art.
Plains Art Museum is your non-profit art museum and education center, supported by over 800 individuals and organizations. The Museum and its Katherine Kilbourne Burgum Center for Creativity are located at 704 First Avenue North in downtown Fargo. For more information about visiting or supporting your art museum, visit plainsart.org.