By Francesca Turchiano

Lily Johnston, 15, will soon be leaving for a six-week pre-college program at the renowned Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Providence. Except for weekends, when she can choose to return home, dorm–based Lily will be in an art-centered world. She will major in sculpture, a new area of exploration for her, while taking foundation courses in design, drawing, and art history.

This animated young woman will have no time for those “lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer,” and she is near-bursting with excitement about that. In addition to her course work, she will be building a portfolio that will likely be an important part of her college applications, and she will learn how to present her work and accept criticism from faculty and peers, an important skill.

In accepting this developmental opportunity, Lily follows in her family’s creative traditions. Lily’s mother, Chris Hanley, is an artist who now works as an art teacher at The Kellogg School in Falls Village. Lily’s father, Richard Johnston, is a craftsman, builder and restorer. When Chris and Richard were kids — she in Connecticut, he in Ireland — their parents managed to call on their own creative instincts, despite full-time jobs. Chris describes her father as a sheet rock taper/cartoonist and Richard describes his as a farmer/poet.

The Johnstons may have more “creative genes” than some, but more important is their conscious decision to nurture their own, and their children’s, inherent creativity. One result is that Lily, a self-described “out-of-the-box thinker,” seeks and finds no/low cost ways to express herself in creative ways. She acts, sings with Chorus Angelicus, where she was Head Girl and learned to sing in eight languages, creates art at home, keeps her own drawings journal and, like any self-respecting free thinker, never wears “what everybody’s wearing.” At 15 going on 16, she’s developed a distinctive way of dressing that is in sync with her individuality. As she says, “going with the crowd is like going nowhere.”

And, not surprisingly, her sister Georgia (14) is also a singular sensation. She’s won a near-full scholarship to The Berkshire School, which she will begin as a boarding student this fall.

If I could choose but one word to describe Lily and the Johnston household, I’d pick crenco, a word I had to create to capture their gorgeous, crazy quilt environment that is full of stuff, but dominated by creativity, energy, and color, as well as a small animal kingdom. It’s a house Matisse would have loved, and a house fully lived in by each and all of its occupants.

Photo of Lily Johnston, top, by Bruce Frisch.