Avigayil Mudd: Drowning in Failure

Sand and gesso canvases

After my freshman year at Lander, I applied to the first job that came up on Google when I typed in “summer jobs near me”. Camp Dogwood was not only the first result, but the only result that I applied to. While filling out the application, there was a section about their need for lifeguards, so I checked the box and spent the next few weeks trying to get in shape. During training week at camp, us future-lifeguards were sent away to the YMCA. While I passed all the first-aid courses, I failed miserably at the physical exam. Me, future-lifeguard, ended up drowning in the pool, and no one took me seriously until I was unconscious. I was mortified that I was the only girl there, and that all the guys were judging me for not being able to pass the physical test. I felt like I single-handedly brought female progress back to the stone-age because I couldn’t swim down eleven feet and pick up a stick. Looking back, I realized that, had this failure not happened, I would not have become the director of arts at camp.

Textured seahorse canvas

Nineteen years old, no experience with art other than failing out of my art classes, and never having worked with blind people before, I was given the keys to the lonely art building up the hill and I went to see what the rest of my summer was going to look like. I realized quickly, after going through all the cabinets and closets, that the activity they called art was really just crafts. The tools around me consisted mostly of tiny pillow making kits and those lizards made out of shiny string and beads you would make as a kid.

My first thought was, ‘this is easy, you don’t really need eyes to make crafts’, my second thought was ‘these crafts are lame and these people are going to hate me’. During the first week of camp, my assumptions came true – the crafts were lame and the people hated me. They told me they had been making pillows and beaded lizards for years, and they wanted to do actual art. Nineteen years old, no experience with art, and having only worked a week with blind people, I had to figure out how to make art accessible for the blind community.

 Drawing was thrown out of the window pretty quickly because I already could not draw, and I have one working eye. Paint is a lot more tactile, but I knew the campers were tired of doing kiddy-things, so that took paint-by-braille-numbers out of the picture. My goal was for them to be as independent as possible during the paint process, and for me to look like I knew what I was doing, and a lot of that seemed impossible. I felt like I was completely alone, because who wants to help the girl that has to teach art to blind people?

I kept looking and discovered that there were a few 8x10 canvases, enough to last us until I could go out shopping, so I laid them out on the table in front of me. I decided I was going to make textured canvases, so I found a can of gesso, stole a bag of sand from the handyman’s supply closet, and hoped that it wouldn’t rain hard again because the front door may or may not have flooded without the bag of sand I stole. Later I went back to steal an empty bucket and lid with which to mix and store my new concoction.

End of the week dances

With the gesso and sand, I made canvases with textured shapes so that the campers could feel what they were painting. Nothing in the art room was equipped with braille, so for the paint I resorted to smell instead of touch. Luckily my boss was one of those essential oil moms, so I asked to borrow her essential oils and I mixed my own paints with them – lavender for purple, cinnamon for red, you get the picture. And now, my campers were able to paint their own pictures. 

Before I went to Camp Dogwood, I was excited at the prospect of learning how to help and understand the visually impaired community. As a psychology major, I was particularly excited to work with a population that I had no experience with or exposure to. Aside from the difficulty of learning how to work with this population of people, I figured my camp experience would be easygoing and full of happy memories. For the most part, my expectations for camp were correct – every day  was full of fun activities, and each week ended with a dance party where seemingly subdued and sweet campers held onto their walkers and threw it back to “Apple Bottom Jeans”.

My breakaway was never supposed to happen at Camp Dogwood. After a couple
of setbacks that started with my dream oversea school rescinding my acceptance and ended in corona-virus, I got approved for my breakaway to be the two previous summers I had spent at camp. Looking back, I think it is beautiful that my breakaway happened before I was viewing it as a breakaway, because I had no expectations for what I was supposed to get out of it.

Tired guide dogs

Avigayil Mudd is a Psychology Major and Human Services minor. She completed her breakaway retroactively at Camp Dogwood in the summers of 2018 and 2019. Her expected graduation is May 2021, and she hopes to continue serving the blind and visually impaired community by working at Camp Dogwood when its doors open to the public again.