Ivy Hall Elementary School Student Wins National Art Competition

BUFFALO GROVE, IL — Receiving over 500 online votes, Ivy Hall Elementary School student Kameron Oliva was recently named a winner of Artsonia's Artist of the Week contest. Oliva's winning piece is a torn paper art titled, "Cute Seascape."

"I created a seascape with a boat and birds. We ripped and glued paper with lots of colors to make a sky and a sea," Oliva said.

The voting competition is held on Artsonia.com, the world's largest collection of student art portfolios exhibiting over 100 million pieces of student art.

Blick Art Materials donated a $100 gift certificate to the winning school and an individual $50 gift certificate to the student artist.

According to Artsonia, Oliva's teacher, Katherine Lindgren, has been teaching art for more than 20 years. She is one of the thousands of art teachers who use Artsonia to digitally showcase student art, organize and plan art lessons, and fundraise for their classrooms. Artsonia allows family and friends of student artists to view the art online and create custom keepsakes from the student art. Artsonia gives back 20 percent of all revenue to the local art classroom.

"Every day we create, we grow, we make messes, and we connect with the world around us through our art," Lindgren said. "Artsonia allows my students to do all of those things in an organized way. It also allows them to share their art with the world."

Developed 20 years ago, the artist of the week competition encourages teachers to submit student artwork and engage the school and community to vote on and recognize students for their creative achievements. Every week, Artsonia selects 12 random submissions in each of four different age groups (PreK-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-12) from artwork submitted the previous week. Voting is open to the public for several days before the winner is announced.

"Inspiring students to express themselves creatively brings me so much joy," Lindgren said.

For more information, visit artsonia.com.