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Lincoln Trail College recognized Crawford County’s young artists at this year’s annual Celebrate Art! Event on March 5. The annual event invites high school artists to submit their work for a competition and also brings the artists to the College to hear from a professional artist.
Crawford County high school students submitted 61 pieces of art for this year’s Celebrate Art! competition. The artwork was on display in the Library and was judged by Gregg Bonelli, Kelly Mullins, Brent Todd, and Winter Harmsen. They judged the work based on creativity, composition, and technique.
The judges chose eight standout pieces. Seven were awarded Outstanding Artist Awards and one was selected as Best of Show. This year’s Best of Show winner was Wisteria Feigel of Oblong High School for her piece “Warning.” She also earned an Outstanding Artist Award for “Ollie Octopus.”
Hutsonville High School’s Ian Abendroth earned Outstanding Artist Awards for “Jessica, Shut Up I Swear” and “Oh, I’m Blocky.” Oblong High School’s Maddi Patterson earned Outstanding Artist Awards for “Penni” and “Aaahhhhh.” Alyssa Fielder of Oblong High School earned an Outstanding Artist Award for “Turtle” and Hutsonville High School’s Madeline Knecht earned an Outstanding Artist Award for “Bed Bug.”
The eight works of art will be on display in the LTC Library March 9 through April 24.
This year’s featured artist was Steve Meadows, the owner of S.D. Meadows Folk Art Gallery in Palestine. Meadows grew up in Willow Hill and is a graduate of Oblong High School. He studied Architectural Drafting before taking drawing and painting classes. His art was put on hold by the Vietnam War and when he returned, he used the G.I. Bill to finish his art education at Eastern Illinois University.
He began his art career carving wood folk art, which he sold at folk art shows across the country. One of his first big jobs was from the Valley Forge Show where he was asked to create 50 penguins a month for six months for the Museum of American Folk Art in New York City. He also created 15,000 fish decoys for Eddie Bauer. Bloomingdale’s Department Store in New York had him create 13 patriotic penguins for its Fourth of July window display. Meadows’ art has been featured on HGTV and he has a walking stick carving called “Uncle Sam” in the permanent folk-art collection at the Smithsonian Institute.
Meadows now creates pieces from things many people throw away. He showed the students his “junk art” and talked to them about his creative process. Meadows talked about how he has evolved as an artist over his career and encouraged students to continue exploring their creativity.
