Exhibit requires touching experience

By Wes Woods, On-Line Forty-Niner

Wednesday, September 23, 1998

"Please Do Touch" is not the usual request at an art exhibit.

Long Beach's Festival of the Five Senses, opened its first exhibit, "Please Do Touch: A Walk-Through Jungle Forest by Day and Night," on Monday in the Design Building, TE-2, Room 116.

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ART REVIEW

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The entrance of the exhibit is composed of an interesting visual opening of hanging clear bottles and blue rubber gloves inflated for effect.

The exhibit emits a stench of bark along with eye-catching plants and an eerie darkness. Nature sounds are blasted by a radio, along with slides of far-away cities on the walls. Red and white lights pierce the darkness.

One piece is captivating by its mere simplicity is the "Touch Box" by Andre Kohler. It is a basic white, rectangular box with circular holes on the side of it. In these holes are a series of everyday objects, which one can only figure out by holding them.

The ceramics class helped with a unique piece that lets one sculpt his or her own work out of clay.

Haley Doti and Sara Sollis created "The Egg Nest." It has various egg shapes suspended by wires, covered with leaves, fur or rocks.

There is also an animal exhibit with a boa, turtles, an iguana and other creatures.

Founder and artistic director Claudia Durgnat has focused the exhibit to correspond with Cal State Long Beach's Odyssey Project 1998-1999: The Self and Its Sources, starting with the sense of touch.

Future exhibits will feature the other senses, starting with sight on Oct. 31.

A person cannot live without the sense of touch, she said.

"You can go three weeks without drinking water, three weeks without eating, but without touch you have nothing," Durgnat said.

Durgnat also encourages other students, no matter what field of study, to contribute their own ideas and works to the project.

"Philosophy, journalism, and others ... it's everything, not only art," Durgnat said.

To contribute a piece, one may call Durgnat at (310) 359-3389.

The exhibit runs until Oct. 2 from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m.