North Kingstown High School Student Wins Online Art Competition

NORTH KINGSTOWN, RI — North Kingstown High School student Madison Turillo won Artsonia's Artist of the Week contest.

The contest, hosted by Artsonia, is a voting competition among the world's largest collection of student art portfolios. A spokesperson for Artsonia said there are more than 90 million pieces of student art on their website.

Turillo received more than 800 online votes for her winning art, a still life depicting a basket of apples. Her teacher, Janice Strain has been teaching art for more than 25 years. She is thrilled to have one of her students celebrated for their artistic achievement.

"To be recognized lifts (students’) spirits and self-esteem," Strain said. "It gives them the acknowledgment they need to go on to continually create, critically think, take risks, develop style, and quite possibly pursue."

Strain is one of the thousands of art teachers from over 100 countries around the world who use Artsonia to showcase their student art, crowdsource lesson plans and help fundraise for their classrooms. Artsonia lets family and friends of student artists create and purchase organic keepsakes from the student art, and then gives back 20 percent of all revenue to the local art classroom.

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 then open to the public for several days before the winner is announced.

Blick Art Materials donated 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,” CEO Jim Meyers said in a statement. "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."