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Student artists paint with music, movement

Before she became a full-time artist in 2001, Connie Noyes was an art therapist, using art to help troubled youths deal with their problems.

So when she was invited to run two days of workshops for high school students in Community Unit District 300, she was a little apprehensive.

Her fears turned out to be misplaced. Fifty students from Hampshire, Dundee-Crown and Jacobs high schools went along with Noyes this week as she showed them - through music and movement - how to translate their emotions into a representative piece of art.

"I told them to forget everything they know about art," Noyes said Thursday. "Paint the experience with the objects instead of just the objects."

Noyes' visit was made possible by a "Visiting Artist Grant" funded by the District 300 Foundation for Educational Excellence and Target in West Dundee.

Diane Magerko, performing and fine arts chair for the District 300 Foundation, met Noyes at an art show in Chicago and invited her to share her unconventional methods with students.

"She has a very unique way of bringing art to the observer," Magerko said. "Her work is very loose and wonderful, very abstract. I just found her exhilarating."

In her workshops Wednesday and Thursday, Noyes likened the creative process to musical or emotional development, beginning with the "flowing" of ideas, the "staccato" process of putting them together, the "chaos" of self-doubt, the "lyrical" path out of chaos and the "stillness" of resolution and completion.

Students took Noyes' lessons to heart. For her final project, Hampshire junior Bailey Leggo used an apple slicer, a rag and a potato masher dipped in fuchsia paint to create textures and patterns against a turquoise canvas.

"I thought it was really cool," Leggo said. "We learned a lot of ways to express ourselves. It's different than I've done before because I had more freedom."

Art teachers from the three high schools, who helped Magerko organize Noyes' visit, hope to bring a different artist to the district each year.

"It exposes kids to a different side of art that they wouldn't see in school," Hampshire art teacher Laura LaRue said. "For them to see the success of somebody who works like this, they get to have a peek into what their lifestyle is like."

Chicago artist Connie Noyes worked with art students from Hampshire, Dundee-Crown and Jacobs high schools this week. Brian Hill | Staff Photographer