Local artwork recognized
Summit Charter senior’s mural wins
Summit Charter Collegiate Academy senior Sarah Mathenia watched from a table in the middle of the room as the grand prize winning Step Up banner was unwrapped. As it became apparent that it was her mural, she smiled from ear to ear and blushed slightly as applause broke out midday Tuesday at the Porterville Library.
After Parks and Leisure Services Director Donnie Moore and Porterville City Councilwoman Martha Flores unwrapped the mural, Mathenia, 17, went downstairs and oustide of the library and slid the mural in the space provided on the side of an orange Sierra Management Tranist bus while friends and family took photos. It will be featured on the side of the bus until next year’s winner takes its place.
The contest was broken up into four age groups — kindergarten through third grade; fourth through sixth grade; seventh and eighth grade; and ninth through 12th grade. The winner of each age group and their parents and teachers were invited to Tuesday’s luncheon. Their four murals decorated one wall of the room.
In addition to being the overall winner, Mathenia won for the high school age division and also received a $250 American Express gift card. The three other winners were Ivan Betancourt, a third-grader at Santa Fe Elementary, Tiana Contreras, a sixth-grader at Pioneer Middle School; and Kalista Ayala, a seventh-grader at Bartlett Middle School.
Moore recognized each winner and Flores presented each with a city coin and a Parks and Leisure Services goodie backpack. They were also given the large mural to take home that adorned the wall.
“We had over 800 entries, so these four kids today, you beat out hundreds of kids,” Moore said.
The Step Up banner contest has been going on for the past couple of years, Moore explained. Step Up is a program that helps kids stay out of gangs and provides them and their families with gang prevention resources. In the past the theme of the contest was related to gang prevention, but this year kids were asked to design a banner that illustrates the choices people can make to benefit their environment.
Mathenia’s mural featured three people of various ages recycling and exercising.
“I looked up some
things you could do to improve the environment,” she said. “And some of these came up like taking out the garbage, and you need to recycle. I was having lots of fun.”
Mathenia said she’d entered the contest once
before when she was in middle school, but did not win.
Major contest sponsors included Tulare County Step Up, Porterville Unified School District, Burton School District and the City of Porterville, Moore said.