Prestigious awards were given recently to FHS artists competing in the Houston Livestock and Rodeo School Art Competition which took place at The Arts Alliance of Clear Lake (TAACL) on January 11.
            FHS senior Jack Corpening entered a sculpture which is judged separately from the two-dimensional art and won Best of Show out of all the Houston Western Sculpture entries. Corpening’s sculpture is made of Sculpey  a clay he learned to work with at Ringling School of Art and Design last summer.
            In two dimensional art, high school winners included Tory Treybig’s Best of Show with Arnis, a longhorn at an artistic angle; Lindsay Barckholtz’s Gold Medal with The Hurricane, a close up view of a cow’s face.  Teresa Edeen, also a Gold Medal winner, was recognized for Sweet Dreams, a cat sleeping with a cowboy hat.
At the Junior High School level,   Best of Show  was awarded to James Strachan for Desert Round Up, two horses and cowboys and a Gold Medal was presented to  Darby Easterday  for Texas Cow, an artistic view of the face of a cow.
            Elementary artist Grace Enochs received Best of Show for Rooster Under a Crescent Moon and Gold Medal was given to Alyssa Leggio for Three Horses.
            The School Art Program began in 1964 as a poster contest. The official School Art Committee was formed in 1969, creating the first School Art competition for the 1970 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.
           Currently, there are approximately 300,000 students in 100 public school districts and 60 private schools who create Western heritage artwork and receive a School Art Program certificate of merit.
           In 2011, 667 pieces of winning artwork were selected, and from this artwork, 54 pieces were sold at the School Art Auction. In 2011, the Auction generated more than $1.3 million.

All art work may be viewed in SmugMug.