COUNTYWIDE : Student Wins Honor for Earth Day Poster

A Camarillo teen-ager has won a national Earth Day poster contest.

Nancy Lucchese, 17, a junior at Gateway Community School in Camarillo, was awarded first place in the national contest sponsored by the State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators and the Assn. of Local Air Pollution Control Officers.

Her silk-screen poster depicts a pair of lungs in which the bronchial tubes have sprouted flower blossoms.

The poster’s simplicity and its message, urging people to care about clean air, is important to Lucchese, she said.

“People have got to live a simpler life, one closer to nature,” she said.

The associations sponsoring the contest awarded Lucchese’s school $500. It will buy supplies for the art program, said Bruce Freeman, Lucchese’s art instructor.

Lucchese was one of two winners of a Ventura County contest whose entry was submitted nationally. Lucchese’s poster won in the category of students in grades 7-12.

Rachelle Gould, a third-grader from Camarillo, won in the category for children in kindergarten through sixth grade.

Lucchese’s poster will be displayed throughout the weekend at the Channel Islands National Park office at Ventura Harbor.