Newtown Middle School Student Wins Online Art Competition

Press release from Artsonia:

May 11, 2021

Newtown Middle School student Mackenzie Penrod is the proud winner of 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 80 million pieces of student art.

Penrod received more than twelve-hundred online votes for her winning art.

When asked how she felt when she found out she won Artist of the Week, Penrod said, “At first, I was surprised, because there were a bunch of good pieces on Artsonia, but then I was really excited.”

Penrod’s teacher, Leigh Anne Coles has been teaching art for more than 9 years.

“When a student is recognized for their artistic achievement, it means that I have given them the necessary tools and help for them to accomplish their projects,” Coles said. “It means that my student(s) have worked their way through challenges and developed new skills to add to their artistic toolbox.”

Coles 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.

Artsonia developed Artist of the Week ten years ago as a way to encourage teachers to submit student artwork and engage the school and community to vote on and recognize students for their 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 then open to the public for several days before the winner is announced.

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.

This press release was produced by Artsonia. The views expressed here are the author's own.