Jon Campisi, Patch
MONTGOMERY COUNTY, PA — A student from The Hill School in Pottstown has won a congressional artwork competition, and her piece, 'Pork Belly,' will now be on display down at the U.S. Capitol Building for a year-long period.
Tenth-grader Wenlan Jin was this year's winner at the nationwide Congressional Art Competition for high school students, according to the office of U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean, a Montgomery County Democrat who on Monday hosted a reception at the Cheltenham Center for the Arts in honor of the local students from Dean's Fourth Congressional District who participated in the contest.
The three local runners up — Grace Capecci (Shadow Walk), Jessie Xin (Paper Wishes) and Yina Yao (Traffic Light) — will have their works displayed at Dean's district offices.
"The Congressional Art Competition is an opportunity to highlight the remarkable talent and dedication of our students," Dean said in a statement. "I was delighted to meet with all the artists and their families, to get a deeper sense of their impressive work, and to celebrate their accomplishments. The arts are vital to education, and it is important to lift them up in our schools and communities."
Jin, the first-place winner, said that in creating Pork Belly, the medium of which is oil on paint, she experimented with new painting techniques and worked with subjects she had never before drawn.
"I was glad that the piece turned out really well, and I will treasure this opportunity of displaying my artwork in the Capitol," Jin said in a statement.
The competition was judged by Margaret Griffen, executive director of the Cheltenham Center for the Arts; Lauren McCardle, executive director of Ursinus College's Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art; Yvonne Love, program chair and associate professor of art at Penn State; and Jackie Joyce, a local artist from Abington Township.
