Select art students submitted work to the CUSD district art competition. Winners were then chosen to be featured in the CUSD art show from Apr.14-May 5. Every art teacher in CUSD has the opportunity to submit two pieces of work for every class period they teach. After teachers have submitted their choices the district decides which pieces they want to be a part of the art show. 

The categories for the competition are: ceramics, dark room photography, design or mixed media, digital photography, drawing, jewelry, painting, painting and sculpture. Drawing and painting, AP studio art teacher, Lorena DeCristofaro chose nine students’ art work to submit to the competition. DeCristofaro picks artwork based on “Quality, overall artistic quality” she said. 

Junior Amanda Gummow submitted the piece “Boots and Water”. The piece is a color pencil drawing of a person jumping in a puddle of water. “… I like how I got it to be blurry and out of focus,” said Gummow. She is also glad to have gotten the opportunity to be a part of the competition. Junior Asia Mitchell submitted the piece “Belle Pariss.” The piece is a portrait painting of her younger cousin. “I was able to capture certain details in her face….with all the different colors it really stood out” said Mitchell. She was also shocked to be selected but is happy about getting the opportunity, “Honestly [I] wasn’t expecting it because their is a lot of good artist in Ms.D’s class, I was just shocked, I am glad to just be able to go I am not expecting anything, I am just happy to be selected to compete” said Mitchell.  

Sophomore Jehryn Johnson was chosen to submit his piece, “Untitled”, which features a pair of old broken glasses with water droplets in the cracks drawn with color pencils. “I like the details I was able to get in the water droplets, I think it looks really nice, and it helps with the story aspect of it” said Johnson. Johnson, like other students, was surprised and honored to get the opportunity to be a part of the competition. 

On Apr.14th the winners of the competition were announced and we had two winners from Perry. Junior Summer Tek won 2nd place for her painting “Distortion”, and sophomore Emily Shields won 1st place for her drawing “Water Droplet Apples”. DeCrisofaro said “The quality of the work, the ranges of values, the effort I saw that went into the work, and the pride they took in the work” about why she liked those pieces, and why they were submitted to the competition. 

Shield said, “It was my first time doing Prismacolors, I usually don’t like using color pencils, but I like doing these.” She continued, stating, “I would give it an 8 out of 10.” The art competition is over but now anyone can go and see the winners artwork in Chandler Center for the Arts from Apr.14th-May 5th, and not only enjoy Perry’s artwork, but artwork from all the different high schools.