The Tulare County Farm Bureau Art Contest is something that anyone from grade K-12 can enter in. This year, Tulare County announced its annual farm bureau calendar contest theme, Farming Through The Ages.
Two students who attend Redwood High School have won a spot on the calendar. Emma Souza ‘23, won best overall and was awarded the prize of $50 cash. Jasmin Mondragon-Rivas ‘23, was awarded the prize of $25 cash.
The way that these two students had become aware of the art calendar contest was through their art teacher, Mr. Harris. Mondragon-Rivas says that her “art teacher just told us one day,’ We have a farm bureau contest. Everyone has to do it”.
Souza says that “it was pretty fun” and that it had taken her about a week to finish. She enjoyed drawing it, along with drawing the animals. Her favorite part was creating the cows since she loves cows.
Mondragon-Rivas says that it was “very tiring; we had at least two months to prepare. I restarted like 30 times and actually, literally last minute before the deadline I finished it quickly.”
When having to decide what type of scene they both wanted to work with on their art, both of these students had changes in ideas when one would come to mind. Mondragon-Rivas says that their ideas changed a lot. “I went from like nice farm animals to nice scenery back to farm animals to scenery to different kinds of scenery to ocean scenery to a farm scenery, then to the ranch house.”
Souza says “at first [she] was thinking of drawing a farm, like a type of landscape, but then [she] was thinking the theme is farming through the generation, so [she] decided, ‘‘oh why not create family’ but instead of people do animals, because I’m a big animal lover so I decided to create a cow with her baby, a duck with her babies and a bunny with her babies to show the next generation on the farm.”
To Souza, the thought process was pretty exciting. She was excited to create her artwork since she enjoys drawing. Mondragon-Rivas was more focused on details, She wanted everything to be blended in and not have any little lines as well as have some pop of color.
The challenges that they faced also differed. Mondragon-Rivas faced the challenge of the deadline, figuring out what to do, indecisiveness, and acrylic paint that would chip off constantly so she would have to start over again. Souza had faced the challenge of picking out what she wanted to draw. She says “ I knew I wanted to create animals, but I didn’t know exactly which ones at first, so that took me a bit and also decide where to place them.”
Souza and Mondragon-Rivas were both surprised as well as happy when they found out that they had won the Farm Bureau Art Calendar contest. Souza says that when she found out that she won she was “very excited and happy.” Mondragon-Rivas said that she was “actually pretty happy. I didn’t think I’d actually win because I thought that there’d be more advance.”
Souza would like to add that she “love[s] art.”
Mondragon-Rivas would like to say, “indecisiveness is not something that will stop you, you could still try. Just try to make the deadline first.”
Natalie Enriquez
Natalie Enriquez, '24, is in her second year of writing for the Redwood Gigantea. Outside of journalism, she likes to pass time reading or listening to music. Natalie hopes to make her time, as well as others, at Redwood High School fun and memorable.
Tags: art calendar contest, arts, arts and entertainment, Farm Bureau, redwood gigantea, redwood high school, redwood journalism, rhs