“It’s a situation where there is no downside,” program champion Nancy Lawrence said.
She and her team of volunteers have sifted through more than 3,000 entries this year, in genres including drawing, painting, sculpture, print and photography, to select about 750 pieces that will hang in the college’s main gallery and studios.
The process is meticulous, with double and triple checks to ensure that no student’s work is misplaced, and that no child’s name is misspelled on their certificate of participation.
This year’s judges were prolific artist and teacher Ray Jacob, who judged the elementary 2-D art; the Garden Grove Unified School District’s retired Coordinator of Fine Arts, Bernie Jones, who judged the secondary-level 2-D art; and Festival of Arts exhibitor and art professor Pat Sparkuhl, who judged the 3-D entries.
Thirteen high school students will receive scholarships to attend the college’s summer Portfolio Development Class.
The scholarship winners will be honored at a reception on the exhibition’s opening day.
Lawrence is also president and a founding member of Designing Women, a volunteer support group for the college that puts the event together each year.
In addition to many second-generation entrants, Lawrence has also witnessed past winners who have gone on to teach children who now submit their own work.
A student from Shanghai who attended a school in Orange produced a gouache that struck Lawrence’s eye; the student earned a Color It Orange scholarship, showed at the Chinese Contemporary Art Gallery and now sends her own students’ work to be judged at Color It Orange.
One of her students will find out soon that they have won a scholarship, bringing the process full-circle.
