LCN Students Add Personal ‘Touch’ to Festival of the Senses Art

Drawing inspiration from the theme, “Healing Touch,” students are putting their own touch on some 65 art panels set to be displayed at this year’s Festival of the Senses in Clinton Township.

“They have to go with the theme of the festival and we have nothing to do with the theme,” said LCN art teacher Patricia Willoughby. “Last year’s theme was ‘Art is From the Heart,’ and there were a lot of hearts. So (with this year’s ‘Healing Touch’ theme,) you’ll see a lot of hands, I think, but the kids can interpret it any way they want.”

For LCN juniors Mary and Stormy Young, this interpretation is a tiger surrounded by a border of flowers, which Stormy Young said are brightly colored to appeal to the eye and calm the senses.

“This is based off of ‘Healing Touch’ and we’re doing a tiger to represent that wild animals aren’t just aggressive, they are loving and caring, too,” said Mary Young.

Working individually and in groups, the students are still in the early stages of creation, with many still looking to uncover their own interpretation of the festival’s theme.

LCN freshmen Mary Anderson and Nicole Nahtygal are among those still searching for inspiration. 

“I tried to look up things on the Internet and I couldn’t find anything,” Anderson said. “I heard ‘Healing Touch’ and I thought of (hands).”

And while the content of the panel remains a mystery to Nahtygal as well, she does have ideas about the color.

“I think we should do black and white and gray and a really bright color,” she said.

Although Anderson and Nahtygal are art fans, both admit the community service hours received through the project influenced their participation. 

“Any student was eligible (to create a panel) because in our school district, students need 40 hours of community service to graduate and this is an activity,” Willoughby said. “It’s enjoyable. They have fun doing it and they earn community service hours for working on the panels.”

Willoughby added that in the three years LCN has participated in the festival, it has boasted the most panels of any school present and last year, an LCN student won the festival’s equivalent of the People’s Choice Award, which included a monetary prize.

Each panel, provided by the festival to the artists, is identical in size (4x4) and painted with acrylic or outdoor latex paint to allow it to withstand the elements while on display during the festival.

The 2011 Festival of the Senses will take place Sept. 24-25 from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. at the Clinton Township Civic Center.