Southern Ocean Student Wins Online Art Competition

WARETOWN, NJ — A local elementary school student is the winner of an online art competition.

Brendan Long, a student at Frederic A. Priff Elementary School, won Artsonia's Artist of the Week contest, a voting competition held on Artsonia.com, the world's largest collection of student art portfolios exhibiting over 100 million pieces of student art, the company announced in a news release.

“I feel so happy to win Artist of the Week. I love art,” Long said. He received more than 500 online votes for his winning art depicting lily pads inspired by Claude Monet.

“I used different color paints to make the pretty water. I made lily pads, and those are flowers I made with different color paper on them,” Long said of his artistic process.

Long's teacher, Gretchen Short, has been teaching art for more than 22 years. “The students are what makes my job enjoyable,” Short said.

Art teachers who use Artsonia to showcase their student art, manage the art room, crowdsource lesson plans, and fundraise for their classrooms, according to the company. Artsonia lets family and friends of student artists create and purchase custom keepsakes from the student art and then gives back 20 percent of all revenue to the local art classroom.

“Artsonia has been such a positive experience. I love that I can communicate what I do in the classroom with the parents,” Short said.

Artsonia developed Artist of the Week 15 years ago to encourage 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.

“I am very proud of my students and their hard work. To see one of them get recognized is a wonderful feeling,” Short said.

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

“Our mission at Artsonia is to bring communities together to celebrate children's artistic expressions,” said Jim Meyers, CEO, and co-founder of the company. “Artist of the Week is a perfect way to get local schools, families, and friends involved in the process of creating, recognizing, and cherishing student art.”

For more information, visit artsonia.com.