Morrow County students earn art contest honors

HEPPNER — Two Morrow County students were honored during a virtual reception held earlier this week. Their artwork was selected among 643 entries submitted to the AITC Calendar Art Contest, sponsored by Oregon Agriculture in the Classroom Foundation.

This year, artwork was submitted by K-6 students across the state in public, private, charter and homeschool education systems featuring Oregon agriculture and natural resources. The entries celebrated a wide variety of Oregon’s 220 agricultural commodities.

The two local winners attend lone Community School and Heppner Elementary School.

Isabelle Ogden, a fifth-grader from lone Community School, submitted artwork featuring sheep grazing in an open field with luscious green grass, and can be viewed on the March page of the calendar.

“I chose to draw sheep because when I did 4-H, I had a sheep,” Ogden said. “Sheep provide food and fiber in the state of Oregon.”

Heppner Elementary School fourth-grader Kathryn “KC” Anderson drew a chicken, which can be viewed on the February page of the calendar.

“I chose to draw chickens because I like the detail on their feathers and they produce eggs and meat for Oregon,” Anderson said. “We have nine free range chickens at my house. Some of the chickens are Golden Laced Wyandotte. I based my drawing off one of these and her name is Super Chicken.”

The 13 students selected to be featured in the 2020-21 calendar received a $50 award and certificate. The winning artwork is displayed on the AITC website. Calendars are free to Oregon teachers, and can be ordered for just $4 on oregonaitc.org/shop.

“The calendar contest is a great project for teachers and students to assign as a fun project during this time of distance learning. It gives teachers an opportunity to discuss the bounty and beauty of Oregon agriculture and incorporate art into their virtual classrooms,” said Jessica Jansen, AITC executive director, in a press release.

Each month in the calendar features one of the winning student’s art and each day of the year has a fact about agriculture.

Oregon Agriculture in the Classroom Foundation (AITC) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping students grow in their knowledge of Oregon’s agriculture, environment and natural resources. AITC provides free educational lessons, activities and resource materials to Oregon educators to support the integration of agricultural themes into academic subjects, such as math, science, history and language arts.