KANAWHA COUNTY, WV (WOWK) – A local high school student won big at an international art competition.
According to the Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes, George Washington High School junior Katelyn Lowe received the Best in Show prize at their ARTEFFECT competition.
Lowe’s submitted artwork is called “A Woman Ahead of Her Time” and highlights the work of Jackie Ormes, the first Black woman cartoonist to have her work published in newspapers. Lowe’s piece incorporates some of Ormes’ comics as the background for the graphite portraits of her.
“As a biracial female teenager, it did not take too long to decide on Jackie Ormes as my Unsung Hero. As a self-taught artist, I was mesmerized by her artwork in the Torchy Brown in Dixie to Harlem comic strip and the Patty-Jo ‘n’ Ginger cartoons,” said Lowe in her impact statement. “As the first Black woman cartoonist published in newspapers, she portrayed the actual issues of racial segregation and discrimination in real-time.”
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This year marked the ninth year for the ARTEFFECT competition, which invites 6th-12th grade students from around the world to “explore and champion” the stories of the unsung heroes who have made a positive and profound impact on history. The artists were required to submit an impact statement.
In another part of her impact statement, Lowe said, “Once I read about her heroines, including Torchy in Heartbeats, and saw how strong and independent these women were, including being socially and politically aware, I could not wait to draw what I thought Jackie encompassed with her cartoons and journalism. Her heroines faced contemporary issues for their times and no matter what the deception, they always came through in the end.”
As part of her Best in Show prize, Lowe received an award of $3,000. The awards passed out among the 20 winners totaled $26,250 in prize money. Other winners, including the Grand Prize winner, included students from the states of Washington, California, New York, Mississippi, Georgia, Oklahoma, Oregon and New Jersey, as well as the countries of South Korea and Canada.