TJ has two winners in the annual DPL bookmark contest with this year’s theme: You Are Here.
Artwork by Ed Gloor
In the 2011 Teen Denver Public Library Bookmark Contest two TJ students, Elias Valenzuela and Mariana Delgado, are 1st place winners along with 20 other TJ students who received honorable mention.
The Denver Public Library holds an annual bookmark competition to promote their summer reading program for teens. “I made the Bookmark Contest an assignment in my classes. I like the competition because it excites the kids about art. We’ve been entering the contest since 2002 and it has become a TJ tradition,” said Art Teacher Brooke Stoyer.
This year’s Theme, You Are Here, proved a to be a difficult one. “I did a Power Point presentation to help them brainstorm what ‘You are Here’ means and to help give them ideas about different ways they could use the theme. We did some brainstorming as a class and i also showed them some of last year’s bookmarks from the competition online,” said Stoyer.
The DPL competition is to create and submit a bookmark that is based around the theme, promotes the summer reading program, and shows creativity. “The kids were given the theme and the specific dimensions of the bookmark and poster they were to create. They then could create any kind of two-dimensional art they wanted using water-color, colored pencils, pastels, basically any material they wanted,” said Stoyer.
Stoyer says she expected the students to do well in the contest. “We have winners every year. This year two actually won and there were 20 honorable mentions. I didn’t expect so many students to be mentioned and recognized. I like seeing my students recognized for their work. That is probably my favorite part about the contest,” said Stoyer.
A ceremony will be held this month for all the winners of the contest at the Downtown Library. “When I went to create my bookmark I just tried to think of something out there. I didn’t expect to win because the other bookmarks were really good. I am going to the ceremony downtown where I will get a $25 Target gift card as a prize for winning,” said Elias Valenzuela, one of the contest winners here at TJ.
