3 Pottsville students win awards in annual exhibition

Three students from Pottsville Junior High School have won top awards in the 56th Young Arkansas Artists Exhibition at the Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock. Shown here working on their art projects at school are McKenzie Horton, from left, Lorinda Nordin and Jada Parker.
Three students from Pottsville Junior High School have won top awards in the 56th Young Arkansas Artists Exhibition at the Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock. Shown here working on their art projects at school are McKenzie Horton, from left, Lorinda Nordin and Jada Parker.

POTTSVILLE — Art students at Pottsville Junior High School are learning more than just how to draw and paint. Thanks to the tutelage of their art teacher, the students are learning about submitting their artwork for critiques outside the classroom and about earning recognition for their work.

Three of these young artists have received awards in the 56th Young Arkansas Artists Exhibition at the Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock. The show will open May 16 and continue through July 23.

McKenzie Horton, Jada Parker and Lorinda Nordin each received the Teacher’s Choice Award for her grade level. Members of the Arkansas

Art Educators Association select recipients of this award in an online, juried event.

Horton and Parker also won Best of Class awards.

“We were really excited to see that they had won top awards,” said Carrie Drake, art instructor at Pottsville Junior High School.

“Our students always enter the YAA. I encourage them to enter,” said Drake, who has been teaching art at the school for 17 years. She is also certified to teach English as a second language.

“Our students are led by a very talented teacher in Mrs. Drake,” said Kenny Bell, principal at Pottsville Junior High School. “She inspires students to maximize their talents, and this has been proven from year to year by the awards that they have received. We are blessed to have her here teaching at the junior high, and our students have excelled because of her dedicated leadership and coaching.”

Horton, the 14-year-old daughter of Jason and Nancy Horton of Pottsville, won Best of Class in the ninth-grade category and the AAE Teacher’s Choice Award for her colored-pencil entry Hearts Reunited, which depicts a solider being reunited with his young daughter.

“We had done a patriotic sketch, and I was inspired by the soldiers who do so much for our country,” Horton said. “I found a photo that I used for reference and did this in colored pencil. I drew it first and then colored it.

“I was so excited when I learned I had won an award. I couldn’t even believe it.”

Horton said she has been taking art for several years and hopes to continue taking art classes in high school and college.

“I enjoy it very much,” she said. “I will be sad to be leaving Mrs. Drake’s class. It’s possible that I might major in art in college.”

Horton has won other awards for her art. She won first place in the state Beta art competition last year and went on to place fifth in the Beta national competition. She also won a Best of Show award at the Arkansas Art Educators Western Regional Show in February at the Fort Smith Public Library.

Parker, the 13-year-old daughter of Vance and Tracy Parker of Russellville, won Best of Class in the eighth-grade category of the YAA competition, as well as the AAE Teacher’s Choice Award for her charcoal drawing Abandoned Secrets, which is a portrait of a young

African boy.

She said she used an online photograph as a reference for her drawing, explaining,

“I usually do portraits of Africans.

“Charcoal is my favorite medium,” she said.

“I was surprised that I won an award … actually, two awards,” Parker said. “After I processed [the information about winning the awards], I thought, ‘It’s a big deal.’”

This was the first year Parker

had entered her work in the YAA. She recently won a Best of Show award in this year’s AAE Western Regional art competition in Fort Smith.

“I do not plan to major in art,” she said. “I want to go into the medical field. … I hope to be a pediatrician.”

Nordin, the 13-year-old daughter of Lutressa Nordin and Robert Nordin, both of Pottsville,

won the AAE Teacher’s Choice award in the YAA competition for her charcoal drawing Everlasting Friendship, which shows two hands intertwined.

“I have a weird thing about hands and want to try to show what they really look like,” Nordin

said. “I had never worked in charcoal before. It’s different. But once I learned how to use it, I got more comfortable with it. Now I like it.”

Nordin has also won other awards with her art, including one she received for a pen-and-ink piece she submitted to this year’s AAE Western Regional art contest.

“I want to be an artist,” she said. “I hope to major in art in college.”

All three students are in Pre-Advanced Placement art classes at Pottsville Junior High School.

Drake said she also has students enter the Downey Publishing Art for Education Cover Contest, which is for area telephone directories.

“We had a winner this year,” she said. “Natalie Wilson, a ninth-grader, entered a drawing of a bird, and she won. We have students who enter it every year; we take [the top prize] every year, … either the junior high or the high school.”

Drake said she plans to take her art students to see the Young Arkansas Artists exhibit on

Tuesday.

The Pottsville students and others from across the state will be honored at a Family Festival and Awards Ceremony on Saturday. Activities for kids of all ages will be offered from 10 a.m. to noon, and awards will be presented at noon in the Lower Lobby Lecture Hall.

The Arkansas Arts Center is at Ninth and Commerce streets in Little Rock. Normal gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through

Saturday, and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays. The center is closed Monday and major holidays.

For more information, call (501) 372-4000 or visit www.arkansasartscenter.org.

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