King Smith, a third grader at Quitman Upper Elementary School, was recently declared the winner in a contest arranged by the Quitman Main Street Association.
King was one of 51 students in the third grade to enter the competition to design the t-shirt for the second annual Ole’ Tyme Christmas Festival.
The choice was difficult for the five judges who went through the variety of amazing artwork: Cindy Conner, Hope Herrington, Lynnita Bartee, April Hunter, and Donna Miles. The artwork was originally displayed across five tables with four groups of ten and one group of 11. Each judge picked a winner from each table, creating five finalists to choose from. The maximum score that could be given was 75, and the final decision turned out to be close. King won with a total of 66 points. Second place was awarded with a total of 64 points, and third place had a total of 60 points. There was originally a tie for fourth and fifth place, so there was an additional level in place to award extra points to break the tie.
Each of the students who placed in the contest received a ribbon, and the entire third grade class is being provided a pizza party for their contributions.
For King, winning the contest was a great achievement, and he was excited to share how he created his beautiful work of art.
“I liked getting the trunk done and the Christmas decorations and stuff,” said King. “I used crayons.”
The idea to have the third graders develop the shirt design for the Christmas Festival came at the beginning of the planning process.
“One of the duties as the Director of the Quitman Main Street Association is to design a tee shirt for the Ole’ Tyme Christmas Festival,” explained Main Street Director Logan Greene. “As I began working on this project, our city clerk walked into my office and told me her son was selling items from a catalog to raise funds for his school. He's a student at the lower elementary school. While I leafed through the catalog, a thought came across that the best possible artwork for a tee shirt would be the artwork from children. I placed a call to Principal Kristen Schrimpshire at Quitman Upper Elementary and explained my thoughts and how I thought it would be great if the third grade class could participate. She listened and then gave me great feedback and told me she would discuss this with the art director Ms. Latoya Madison and follow up with me. From this initial conversation, I met with them both the following Monday to discuss this in detail.”
Greene was allowed to come to the school to teach a little art and introduce the concept to the third grade class.
“Bear in mind the teaching curriculum had already been established. Part of the curriculum is teaching and identifying shapes, identifying primary colors, and mixing them to create secondary colors,” continued Greene. “I presented an inspirational picture that combined rectangles, squares with rounded corners, and rectangles with slightly rounded corners. A combination of these and there was my inspiration picture: a rear view of a vintage red pickup truck with several Christmas trees standing in the bed of the truck. When this presentation was approved for the 3rd-grade curriculum, suddenly I had an art program to help develop. I was given the honor of being a guest teacher/artist at the upper elementary where I presented to the combined third grade classes, over a hundred students, a large inspirational photo and outlined how they soon would be able to recreate their version of this photo. I outlined and pointed out the breakdown of the shapes and finished the class by showing the students several of my paintings and explaining that the paintings I presented began with mastering shapes and blending colors. The goal was to inspire the students and initiate pride and a sense of ownership by allowing each student to decide if they wanted to enter the art contest, where the winning submission would become the artwork on the Christmas Festival tee shirt. I explained that I appreciated their agreeing to work on this project for me and that the entire third grade class would receive a pizza party.”
King’s design will appear on both t-shirts and sweatshirts. People in the community are able to order one of the shirts, and all of the profits made from the shirt sales will be donated to the Quitman Upper Elementary art program.
