At Cy-Springs High School our TAEA VASE art competition was magnificent. We had 61 students get gold, blue, white and red medals. Our top students, Angelina Harper, Irene Noyola and Alexander Alvardo advanced to State Competition.

Angelina Harper got a the top medal with her two drawings she made. She made a drawing of her dog at the beach because she wanted to show how much she loved her. For her second piece she made a self-portrait of herself on her birthday because she wanted to have a memory with all her friends because she never had something like that. She was not sure about entering the competition, but her art teacher wanted her to go so she signed up. Harper felt more confident in herself after her teacher’s encouragement.

She enjoyed the competition, “As soon as I walked in there was artwork everywhere and it was so beautiful.”

Harper showed her two pieces of artwork to the judges and she said they were all super nice and wonderful. A few days later she learned that all her hard work paid off with a top medal.

Irene Noyola was another of our top medalist. She went to the competition because she wanted to compete, and she felt confident in her art. She started to draw when she was three years old and has been perfecting her skills ever since. She was in Junior VASE in 8th grade when she drew one of her very favorite pieces of artwork which was the Hotel Cecil from Los Angeles. Noyola wants to continue to draw and make it her future career.

“I was extremely nervous because obviously it’s all of the districts and I was hoping it would go well,” she said.

It did her state winning drawing was her in her classroom from the perspective of her glasses to represent daydreaming. The story telling about the drawings at the competition was one of her favorite things. They explained how people got their ideas on what they had drawn.

Our third medalist that will compete at State is Alexander Alvardo. He drew an abstract portrait called Unbowned for the competition and he felt very calm during the competition. His favorite part of the competition was the judging. He liked the judges’ opinions about peoples drawing and found what they said very interesting.

The love for drawing runs in the family as his brothers have a passion of drawing as well. Alvardo wants to continue drawing in college and would like to go abroad for art school.

His first piece of art that made him proud was an drawing of a Mortal Combat video game.