BVNW senior Makayla Gao placed first in the Digital Illustration/Painting category at the annual Merriam Visual Arts competition, with the winners being announced in early December.
Merriam’s High School Visual Arts Competition began in mid-October, when students were chosen to submit artwork for a chance to win the competition. When a student wins the competition, they will have their artwork will be displayed in the Tim Murphy Art Gallery.
Gao said she first found out about the competition through the National Art Honor Society, as it was a point of opportunity for the students. She started to design her art piece, starting with a sketch and then moving on to painting and finalizing.
“Sketch composition-wise, it only took me two hours to just block down everything and then paint on top of it. Finalizing and getting all the details probably took about eight hours in total,” Gao said.
While Gao was making her art, she said she wanted to send a message with the painting while still having a relaxing vibe. She said she wanted her art piece to convey her culture and wanted it to mean peace.
While Gao got first place in the digital arts category, she was not alone throughout the process of the piece. Visual arts teacher Mrs. Mays assisted Gao with printing and fitting the artpiece, and she attended the award ceremony, where people from all over the area came to see who won.
“It was very crowded. There were people from every school in the Kansas City area, pretty much all the way from Lawrence all the way over to Belton,” Mays said.
Mays said overall the competition was very competitive, with over 400 art pieces submitted, and only 100 were chosen. She said all of the art pieces chosen were very high quality, and any of them could be winners.
“Everything that was accepted was exceptional, honestly, any single piece in the whole competition could have been first place, they were. I mean, that’s how well-crafted everything was,” Mays said.
As the first-place winner in her category, Gao will have her artwork displayed in the museum for about a month alongside the other winners of this year’s Merriam Visual Arts competition.
