FHS art student Jack Corpening got a surprise recently during his lunch period. Instead of a free lunch, he was given $5,000 and a Grand Championship. He was the top national winner in a contest that provided $20,000 to the FHS art department, $5,000 to the artist, Corpening, and $5,000 to his art teacher, Jenifer Sundrla, who assisted him in making sure he completed the project.
          Two contest representatives were on hand to present the award as a surprise along with FHS Principal Mark Griffon, Superintendent Trish Hanks, Mayor Dave Smith, Corpening’s parents, teachers and a filled cafeteria with students during the lunch hours.
            It all started with a large ceramic cow, life size. It was delivered to FHS when Corpening reached the finalist position in the 6th Annual Lucerne Art of Dairy Art Contest.
          Lucerne Art of Dairy is a national contest which asks high school students in grades 9 through 12 to submit designs that interpret how they share joy through the arts using an outline of a cow as the canvas. The finalists are then asked to re-create the design on an actual life-size fiberglass cow that is displayed at their neighborhood Randalls.
          Corpening is the first Grand Prize winner from Texas in the history of the contest.
          Randalls currently operates 35 stores throughout the greater Houston area, 13 stores in Austin, and 63 in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex under the Tom Thumb banner.  Randalls/Tom Thumb is the Texas division of Safeway Inc. a Fortune 100 company and one of the largest food and drug retailers in North America, based on sales. The company operates 1,694 stores in the United States and western Canada and had annual sales of $41 billion in 2010. The company’s common stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol SWY.
          The FHS winning cow will on display permanently at the Randalls in Pearland.