One day, as junior Anna Rayburn walked to her advisory, art teacher Theresa Wallerstedt stopped to inform her she had won an award from Avila University for one of her drawings.

“I didn’t really know she was submitting [my drawing],” Rayburn said.

Junior Clare Odegard said she was informed in a similar manner.

“One day while I was in the art room, she was just kind of like, ‘By the way, you won an award,'” Odegard said.

Wallerstedt entered 14 of her students’ pieces for consideration into the fifth annual High School Invitational Avila art show restricted to juniors and seniors, based on craftsmanship, creativity, size and overall excellence. Out of the 14, Odegard, Rayburn and junior Lindsay Girardeau won awards and their artwork was displayed in a week-long exhibit at Avila.

“I [went to] the closing and was impressed with the entire show,” Wallerstedt said.

Girardeau’s work was a scratchboard – a cardboard coated with impermeable white clay and covered by a layer of ink that is scratched in patters revealing the white surface below – of the art room which took her around two weeks to complete. Rayburn’s work was a blind contour – a drawing done by looking intently at the edge of an object, but never looking at the paper while the pencil moves – self-portrait drawing of her daydreams, which took her a couple of weeks to finish. Odegard is unsure as to which piece of her artwork Wallerstedt submitted for her, but assumes it was her drawing of the commons. All of the submitted pieces were pieces Wallerstedt had assigned to her students.

Winning awards for her artwork is not something entirely new to Odegard, as she won a few awards in eighth grade for her work. However, she still believes it is nice to have this award to put on her resume when she goes to camp at an art institute this summer.

“They have a space for art awards, and now I have something to put in there,” Odegard said. “It gives credibility.”

Rayburn is also planning to put this first award of hers on her resume, which she believes will help her receive good credit with art schools. Rayburn said receiving this award has encouraged her to possibly even enter her work into some contests on her own.

For Girardeau who has always liked art, but just recently became increasingly interested in it, she hopes placing this award on her resume will help her to attend Savannah College of Art and Design where she would like to study art and architecture.

“I was really excited [to receive this award] because I didn’t think [my artwork] was that amazing,” Girardeau said.

Art classes taken at STA:

Anna Rayburn:

• drawing I
• advanced drawing
• ceramics 
• digital photography

Clare Odegard:

• drawing I
• advanced drawing
• painting
• photography
• computer graphics

Lindsay Girardeau:

• drawing I

*Bolded classes indicate which class(es) each girl is currently enrolled in

 To see images of the submitted pieces, click here.