It was quite the surprise to several of the Bowie art students to have their artwork advance from the regional Visual Arts Scholastic Event (VASE) to the state competition.
“This is the first piece that I’ve ever entered in VASE and it was cool that it went to state,” senior Jordan Brittain said. “I wasn’t expecting it to do that well.”
The judging at the regional VASE competition  involved an interview process between a few judges and the student.
“They ask you various questions,” junior Eric Moe said. “Some of them were like ‘What kind of mediums do you use?’ ‘What kind of purposes did this art piece fulfill?’ ‘What was the reasoning behind making this art piece?’ You have to have a thought out detailed explanation for every piece that you bring with you to VASE.”
All of the judges have different artistic backgrounds and teach different levels of art.
“It’s very difficult with vase because you have a large amount of judges from different levels in the schooling system at every single level of judging,” Moe said. “So you have a lot of different opinions and once your art is put through tis soup strainer of judging and criteria then you’re kind of left with some pretty extraordinary pieces.”
Different pieces do well depending on the quality of technique and the meaning behind the artwork.
“There’s not really a criteria to enter VASE so all the pieces are very different,” Brittain said. “All the pieces are pretty different from each other so it’s kind of hard to compare mine to other people’s.”
Senior Julia Lund recently won a district art competition and got the opportunity to have her art displayed on a billboard off of Montopolis Road.
“It was super awesome, if I do say so myself,” Lund said. “It was honestly really surreal because advertising is something that I’ve wanted to do for so long that, not that I didn’t think it was possible, but at my age I didn’t think that I could really get that much experience in the field before I went to college and decided to do advertising and get a degree in it.”
Julia was brought up to her billboard to sign it. Part of that day involved her being interviewed by television reporters as well.
They asked me general questions about the billboard and the creative process,” Lund said. “I personally don’t like interviews. They aren’t too bad, they’re just kind of stressful doing it because the whole time you’re thinking about how this is actually going to be on television, so you don’t want to make a fool of yourself.
This is Lund’s second time winning the contest and  the third year in a row a Bowie student has won this event.
“To not only be given the opportunity to have my work up sophomore year but also senior year was really rewarding,” Lund said.
Her artwork depicts her peers in her art class drawn in their favorite art styles from various time periods.
“She was able to draw me from multiple pictures and get a feeling for my face and do it out of her head, which is really awesome,” senior Daniela Diaz said. “I chose Gustav Klimt and I just really love the colors. It’s beautiful and childish at the same time – it’s very playful.”
The art department is proud of Lund’s accomplishment of winning the billboard contest and having the opportunity to start her advertising career while in high school.
“She’s a great artist so I think she deserves it,” senior Victor Hernandez said.