Each year MPAC invites Morris County Middle and High School students to participate in our annual Student Art Gallery Exhibit and Program Cover Art Contest.
For more information about the Art Cover Contest, email jboeckel@mayoarts.org.
Students were tasked to create a program book cover design based on the theme of “Imagine! Discover! Create!” All participants’ artwork was displayed in the Art Upstairs Gallery through March 21. 2023.
MPAC thanks all of the students who entered and their teachers for encouraging their participation.
Anna Thach, Grade 8, East Hanover Middle School, and Aliyah Ravin, Grade 11, Randolph High School, were selected as the winners of Mayo Performing Arts Center’s annual student art cover contest.
The winning works will appear on MPAC program book covers later this season, handed out at evening events. Approximately 10,000 will see their works on MPAC program book covers.
“Being the winner of this year’s program is certainly an honor,” Miss Thach said. “When the arts have played such a significant role in my life, whether music or actual art or theatre, it’s easy to really appreciate and acknowledge it.”
“I am more than grateful for my piece to be selected,” Miss Ravin added. “It was amazing to see how others took the four words given to us and created such a variety of different pieces. Contests such as this one are extremely import to allow people to explore their mind and transfer it into art, but also for others to expand their imagination by seeing how others took the prompt.”
Over 70 students from area schools participated in the contest. The winning entries were announced at a reception on Monday, February 25, and all entries were displayed in MPAC’s Art Upstairs Gallery through March 3.
“The MPAC Program Art Contest is an incredibly wonderful program providing students with the opportunity of taking on the role of a graphic artist while designing a potential cover for MPAC’s cultural presentations,” said Mercedes Ingenito, Art Teacher, Randolph High School. “MPAC is extremely student and teacher friendly, treating our student artists with great respect and professionalism. This is an event that I continue to look forward to each year while incorporating it within my curriculum as it provides such great real life experience for the students.”
“The MPAC Student Art Gallery Exhibit and Program Cover Art Contest have been an avenue of opportunity for East Hanover Middle School students for the past two years,” said Cathy Shott, Art Teacher, East Hanover Middle School. “The theme: Imagine! Discover! Create! ‘Celebrate the Arts,’ is what I attempt to accomplish through our visual arts program on a daily basis. Students, using the elements and principles of art as their guide, turn basic concepts into personally relevant art. MPAC’s supportive atmosphere has given art educators like myself the impetus to direct, as students imagine, experiment, practice, and grow through fostering self-expression. Viewing the individual artworks of so many talented young adults at the MPAC Gallery both enhances and supports the need for arts education.”
Emma Swayze, a junior at Randolph High School, was selected the winner of the 2018 MPAC Cover Art Contest. Emma’s artwork will appear on the next program book cover, to be seen by thousands of MPAC patrons in March and April. Over 70 middle and high school students from throughout Morris County participated in this year’s cover art contest. All of the children’s works will be exhibited in the Art Upstairs Gallery through March 4. “I was coming out of doing still-lifes in class and I wanted to integrate that into my theme,” Miss Swayze said. “I took a bunch of things from around the classroom and put it together to create my own still-life. I spent hours each night on it and I’m so excited to have won.” MPAC held a reception for all students who participated in the contest on Monday, February 26. Over one hundred people, including the artists, their friends and families attended this special reception where the winner was announced. Emma’s teacher is Mercedes Ingenito from Randolph High School.
