“The Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) works with its partners and with First Lady Yumi Hogan to host a bi-annual statewide student artwork competition and exhibition. 48 pieces from all 24 local school systems and all grade levels hang in the House of Delegates in Annapolis, MD.” MSDE talks about the Governor’s First lady(Yumi Hogan) spring collection of Maryland students art. Hogan is “an artist and she hosts an art exhibition” where she chooses “two examples of student art from each county.” Normally the art would be “presented in an in-person gallery” but this year it will happen virtually.

     When the exhibition happened on March 18th there were “three jurors there were selected to blindly grade the artwork.” The jurors graded the art on a “variety of criteria like artistic vision, artistic voice, etc. the two highest scorers for each county are selected.” One of the people being Annika Peterson, junior. Peterson says that they “were never shown the grades, but the highest scorers from each grade level got a governor citation.”

     “I was really surprised when I first found out that my artwork had been chosen. I remember feeling super shocked and happy at the same time!” Peterson said, after finding out the news that she was selected.

     Peterson says that “all of the pieces that won were amazing” and there was some good competition. She feels it was “really cool to see [her] art with such great work” and she is very content. Peterson states that she “actually didn’t make [her] art to submit it to any contests, so [she] never even considered that it might be selected for anything.”

       Yumi Hogan once said “Your artwork is an expression of your genuine self. Each brush stroke or click of a camera is an act of portraying your thoughts as you see fit. In other words, you alone have the control to create your special identity through your artwork.” In Peterson’s art piece she wanted to “create the effect of moonlight filtering through the trees.” She said overall that it is supposed to convey a sense of peace and “calmness.” Peterson feels that she “definitely succeeded,” and says that “it’s always really nice to get recognition for your work.”

Peterson plans to pursue her art career by creating various amounts of art for school as well as “illustrating the September page in the yearbook” and also plans “on entering more contests in the future!”