Student wins 2nd Congressional District art competition

ALBANY — The Congressional Art Competition for 2015 in the 2nd Congressional District has come to a close and now a happy winner will have her work displayed for a year in the U.S. Capitol.

On Friday at the Albany Museum of Art on Meadowlark Drive, U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop, D-Albany announced the winners of the competition, including first-place winner Alexa Martinez. She will travel in June, courtesy of the museum and Southwest Airlines, to Washington, D.C., with her parents to attend a ceremony on the art exhibition opening.

Martinez, a 10th-grader at Rutland High School in Macon, took the award for her work titled “Carpenter Bee,” created in color pencil on cardboard.

“I was so surprised when I found out I was even entered,” Martinez later said. “My teacher had entered it and hadn’t told me.”

Coming down from Macon, her family took a lot “wrong turns” in getting to the museum and was almost late for her big victory, she said.

“I’m just glad we made it,” Martinez said, “I’m so excited. Art is very very important to me. I love being able to express myself and be as good as I’m able.”

Each spring, the Congressional Institute sponsors a nationwide high school visual art competition to recognize and encourage artistic talent in each district, Bishop said. The competition provides an opportunity for members of Congress to encourage and recognize the artistic talents of their young constituents.

Students submitted entries to Bishop’s office and a three-member panel of local artists judged the work. Martinez’s Carpenter Bee will be displayed with the work from other districts for one year in the Cannon Tunnel, Bishop said, a busy underground walkway between the House office buildings and the U.S. Capitol.

Museum officials announced that this year a $250 purchase award for two nights of lodging was made available by personal contributions from the Museum Board of Trustees.

“We have some of the brightest and the best talent in this area of Georgia,” Bishop said, “and we we owe it to those students to nurture and recognize that talent.”

Honorable Mention at the competition went to Brittany Mitchell, a senior at Westover High School, for her mixed-media work titled “No More Worries.”

Hadden Kelly, 11th-grader from Deerfield-Windsor School took second runner-up for her picture “Chehaw Frogs,” done on scratchboard, and first runner-up went to Jasmine Taylor, an 11th-grader from Dougherty County High School for her title-less picture nicknamed “Gumball.”