Winners of the annual Martin Luther King Jr. competition were honored at a ceremony Monday, Jan. 20. The contest’s prompt was “Building Bridges of Hope Towards Unity” and allowed for various types of submissions including essays, poems, art, sculptures and photos.
Out of the numerous student submissions, juniors Gia Bao Nguyen and Isabelle Gourley were selected as winners – Nguyen placed third among juniors for her essay and Gourley second among juniors for her illustration.. Four Harmon also ended up placing for their essays: Kayley Asante, Joann Aichem, RIver Hughes and Tien Tran.
They did not have a lot of time to work, as their projects had to be submitted before winter break. Art teacher Jim Ferguson emphasized Dr. King’s ideas to help his students create artwork that resonated with the competition’s theme.
“I was proud,” art teacher Jim Feguson said about Gourley. “She was in a time crunch because [submissions had to be] done in the fall, and we had all the holidays coming in and out. I talked about Dr. King’s legacy, what he did, his message on non violence, the type of protesting he did.”
Both winners submitted their pieces without expecting too much to come out of it.
“I was shocked because I missed half the prompt,” Nguyen said. “I wrote about how this could be good for the world and what we should do in our society. But I forgot to write how those values affected my daily life.”
Gourley took the theme with a straightforward approach for her art piece.
“Well, the theme was building bridges of Hope toward unity,” Gourley said. “I took that literally and imagined bridges. I asked my friend Genesis for help and she helped me kind of picture the idea of unity. Two people shaking hands is a good example of unity.”
Last year’s celebration of the winners was affected by weather, but the participants found this year’s event more remarkable.
“This year they had the band and the orchestra,” Nguyen said. “It was really cool to see the dances and everything.”
