DUBOIS – DuBois Area Senior High School student Aiden Rohr is the proud winner of Artsonia’s Artist of the Week contest, a voting competition held on Artsonia.com, the world’s largest collection of student art portfolios exhibiting over 100 million pieces of student art.
Rohr received more than 2,000 online votes for the winning art, titled, ‘Howling Wolf.’
“I like wolves, so I thought I would like the end result of it, and I did,” Rohr said when describing the artwork. “The creation process wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I catch on to things like this fast, which helps.”
When asked about winning Artist of the Week, Rohr said, “I was pretty surprised. I was confused because I didn’t even know it was a thing until I got told. I also didn’t expect to win, so that was cool.”
Rohr’s teacher, Cheyenne Kanouff has been teaching art for more than eight years.
“I am passionate about teaching art because I feel like art is the one subject that can bridge between all areas of life,” Kanouff said. “Art is the essence of using not only creativity, but it is also essential in all other areas such as science, math, writing and more.”
Kanouff is one of the thousands of art teachers who use Artsonia to showcase their student art, manage the art room, crowdsource lesson plans and fundraise for their classrooms.
Artsonia lets family and friends of student artists create and purchase custom keepsakes from the student art and then gives back 20 percent of all revenue to the local art classroom.
“Artsonia has impacted my art room in such a positive way by allowing students to have an outlet to post and share their work,” Kanouff said.
“I heavily emphasize in my classroom the importance of having a portfolio, and Artsonia provides a way to have a digital portfolio that will follow students throughout their school careers.”
Artsonia developed Artist of the Week 15 years ago to encourage teachers to submit student artwork and engage the school and community to vote on and recognize students for their creative achievements.
Every week, Artsonia selects 12 random submissions in each of four different age groups (PreK-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-12) from artwork submitted the previous week. Voting is open to the public for several days before the winner is announced.
“I am always so proud and honored when my students are recognized for their artistic achievements because they work so hard on their projects and ideas,” Kanouff said.
Blick Art Materials generously donates a $100 gift certificate to the winning school and an individual $50 gift certificate to the student artist.
“Our mission at Artsonia is to bring communities together to celebrate children’s artistic expressions,” said Jim Meyers, chief executive officer and co-founder of the company.
“Artist of the Week is a perfect way to get local schools, families, and friends involved in the process of creating, recognizing, and cherishing student art.”
For more information, visit artsonia.com.
