AURORA | Most middle-schooler art enthusiasts are content with having their work displayed at an annual art show or in a hallway display case, neatly hung among other students’ creations for the viewing pleasure of fellow students, administrators and parents.
But budding artists Jenna Braun and Madison Baxter, students at Frontier P-8 in Aurora, have a bigger audience in mind for their latest, collaborative work of art: the entire Denver-metro region.
Thanks to a new collaboration between RTD, Aurora Public Schools and Cherry Creek Schools, the 8th-grade duo of Braun and Baxter may soon have the opportunity to have their latest work – a long, space-themed panorama – turned into a 40-foot graphic to be placed on the side of an RTD bus. The opportunity comes at the hands of the “I heart my RTD” art contest, a new initiative sponsored by RTD to drum up interest for Denver’s constantly growing regional transportation system.
“The aim of the art contest is to encourage young people in our community to be aware of and engaged in the public transportation system through art,” Claudia Folska, RTD board director, said in a statement.
Over 2,400 students across the two Arapahoe County school districts entered their work into the contest, the winners of which will be announced on the last day of the month following a period of online voting from Oct. 17-24. Each of the 19 schools that participated in the contest were allowed to submit two entries, but a panel of RTD board members selected just one finalist from each school to be considered for the online vote and be eligible for their work to be displayed on a bus for thousands to see.
Baxter and Braun’s work, which they created over three weeks with an array of mediums ranging from spray paint to Sharpies, was recently named the finalist for Frontier. Using the contest theme of “My world. My art. My RTD,” the extraterrestrial-themed piece sports various objects – a slice of pizza, music notes and a rocket Popsicle, to name a few – floating through space.
“I was trying to think of all the things RTD can take you to, like to get a pizza, to music lessons, because it can take you all of the places you need to go,” Baxter said.
The girls said they like using RTD buses and lightrail, but don’t do so very frequently, a notion their teacher, Thad McCauley, said was a trend among his art students.
“When I asked them at the beginning of this project, about 60 percent of my kids had ridden some sort of public transportation, and only about 5 percent said they use it semi-regularly,” McCauley said.
In order to increase those percentages and create even more interest among contest participants, RTD gave out a free, one-way light rail voucher to all entrants. Although there will only be one work from each school district selected to be blown into a 40-foot decal and pasted on the side of a bus, second and third-place winners will also be announced, and hundreds of other student works will be posted on the inside of buses in advertising spaces that run along the ceiling. The grand-prize winners from each district will be invited to meet the RTD graphic designer who will manipulate the original work, enlarge it and adhere it onto the bus.
McCauley said that the contest is a win-win for students and RTD because it allows students to express their ideas with visual representations and helps increase interest in transportation.
“The way I teach, that’s why we make art: to share our ideas with things you can’t say verbally but can say visually,” he said. “And buses usually blend in with the city scape, but if one rolls in with a huge crazy decal with a flying pizza, I think that will bring a lot of joy to people’s day. I’m sure too, not many people will think that this is designed by two 8th-grade girls, they’ll be surprised by that.”
Voting for the contest starts Friday Oct. 17, and can be completed on RTD’s website, rtd-denver.com. A winner will be announced Oct. 31 and the winning design will be affixed to one of RTD’s 400 buses in late November.