McCool Wins Congressional Art Contest
Summer McCool of Anderson, a senior and soon-to-be-graduate of McDonald County High School, won the Congressional Art Contest in Congressman Billy Long’s district.
McCool submitted a drawing in colored pencil of her grandmother’s hands peeling an orange. It all started as an assignment in her art class that had to involve an orange.
“It seemed a little random,” she said. “I thought about my grandma because she loves the little Cuties. I went to my grandma’s house and had her hold an orange and peel it. I took (a photo) underneath a lamp in her living room so it was really bright. She’s wearing some turquoise rings in the picture, one that she made and one that her grandma made. It really made the colors pop.”
She said the process of making the drawing took several months. She learned about the contest
from her art teacher, Theresa Walthall. Each school district in the Billy Long district gets to submit two pieces to be judged, and the winning piece goes to Washington, D.C., to be displayed for a year.
McCool noted she submitted a piece for the contest last year as well. It was also a drawing of her grandma and her friends when they were traveling in Europe. It got entered, however, once the piece was framed, it was a bit too large and ended up getting disqualified.
She said when school was dismissed due to the covid-19 pandemic, she assumed the contest would be canceled. Then suddenly her teacher wanted the piece in three days to submit it, so McCool worked very hard to finish it.
When she learned she had won, she said, “I was excited because I had worked so hard.” They had also just put her grandma in a nursing home, so it was an emotional week, she said.
For the past three years, she and her mother have been caretakers for her grandma, who has Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, but it got to the point that they could not provide the care she needed, McCool said.
“We are very close,” she said of her grandma. “Growing up, in elementary school, I would always go to her house after school … We would hang out and go down to the river … She would tell me crazy stories about when she lived in England. She was born in Europe and moved to Florida and all over the U.S. until she settled down in Missouri.”
She said her grandma was also an artist and a nurse, and McCool is going to school for nursing, so they have both of those things in common.
“Ever since I can remember being able to hold a pencil, my grandma would have pencils and notebooks out and creating things, so it’s been a lifelong passion for sure,” she added.
McCool is a daughter of April and Larry McCool.
In the fall she will attend Missouri Southern State University, where she will pursue a bachelor’s degree in nursing. Then she will work as an RN for a while before going back to school for her master’s degree in nursing to become a certified nurse practitioner. Her long-term goal is to start a Christian-based free clinic in this area.
She said that “a lot of people don’t get the health care they need. Our area has extremely high rates of poverty. Something small and local and free would be great, I think.”