Copeland Manor Holds Art Festival May 13

Copeland Manor School is hosting an art festival featuring interactive workshops with visiting artists and performers on May 13.

The fourth biennial ArtFest–Art and Soul–includes a break dance group, a schoolwide keychain making project and hanging colored paint stir sticks along a playground fence .

The ArtFest is divided into three parts. Preparation for the fest began months ago with a parent group lead by Michelle Paul.

“ArtFest is a full school day devoted entirely to the arts,” Paul said. “The goal is to expose the students to many different forms of art and types of artists so that they might discover the artist inside themselves and more fully appreciate all forms of art in the world around them. With this in mind, our theme for this year is Art and Soul. We hope that students will discover the artist within their soul and be inspired to leave their artistic footprint, or sole print, on the world.”         

The students will began the day using shrink film to create their own key chain. The project will only last a few moments, to allow students to move onto the next schoolwide project.

Inspired by the work of Louise Nevelson, each class will create their own collage by gluing found objects in a gift box frame. The individual small scale colleges will then be hung together to create a monochromatic collaborative art display with objects they brought in from home.

An assembly, “SuperForce,” will be held at 9:35 a.m. and 10:35 a.m. at the school, 801 S. Seventh St., Libertyville.

Inspired by the hand painted stair railings at the St. Louis City Museum, students will use acrylic paint to decorate paint stir sticks that will be hung from the tennis court fence along the playground to create a vibrant ribbon of color.

Another part of the ArtFest will be artist workshops, which will be held in the afternoon.

Each class will experience three interactive workshops with visiting professional artists. One will focus on the performing arts, one will focus on applied arts and the third will be fine arts related. In each workshop, the children will learn about the Artist’s creative process and work together on a related activity.

The workshops will focus on painting, drawing, sculpting, pottery, ceramics, writing children’s books, cupcake decorating, film and photography, stage make-up, improv theatre, musical theatre, music therapy, and martial arts.

“We feel so fortunate to have a generous community of artists willing to donate their time on behalf of our students,” Paul said.