Sacred Heart High in Cayo may be closed because of a swine flu scare right now but they recently got their school painted – thanks to the art work of a trio of their students. Last year, they created an Andy Palacio poster, which won a Penta Paint Up Di Place High School exhibition – and the prize was that they got their school fully painted and a replica of the poster was made into a mural at the school. This is the second year of the competition and Rebecca Penner from Belmopan Christian Academy will now get the same done for her school. She won this year’s competition by creating a mosaic image that she says is all about her life.
Rebecca Penner, Winner
“I guess I would just call it me because it is me. It is pretty much
mosaic. A lot of the things in it are more of nature things, like the waves, the oceans, like the caves especially, I like caves and I guess it just came together as I made it, expressing myself as I go along. Like when I first heard about the contest, I said I would just do it because I feel like making something and I could express myself this way but I did not actually expect that I would win anything.”
Carlo Habet, Sponsor
“She actually won for her school a painting, two paintings, they will actually paint the whole school and we just did Sacred Heart, I think you will have some footage of that as well, and a mural will also go on their school to beautify their environment. I know it looks quite daunting but Dr. Swasey assures me that we can do it or at least a piece of it.
I was very pleased with the entries. We had like 150 last year and this year we have over 250 so it is almost double and like you said the quality has actually shot up considerably. We had a lot of ones last year that didn’t really make it but this year even the ones that didn’t make it were strong contenders. There are a lot of paintings you haven’t seen here that are impressive but they couldn’t make the cut because there were others that were impressive as well.”
Penner won $500.00 for first place and she will get her school painted as well as a copy of the mural re-created at her school. Of the 250 art works that were submitted, 40 of the best pieces are on display at the Image Factory and 12 of those were short listed for a calendar.
