Alpine Artisan, Inc. President Kris Gullikson (right) and AAI Treasurer Michelle Breen (left) present Cheyenne Gifford with a $200 check for her drawing.
Graphic Artist and Alpine Artisan, Inc. President Kris Gullikson turned Cheyenne Gifford's logo into a usable graphic for promotions.
SEELEY LAKE- Seeley-Swan High School student Cheyenne Gifford won the 2022 Loon and Fish Logo Contest. According to Kris Gullikson, the president of the Alpine Artisans Inc. (AAI), Gifford was one of two people who submitted their artwork and the first student to both enter and win the Loon and Fish logo contest.
"Her art represented exactly what the Loon and Fish Festival is all about!" Gullikson wrote in an email. "Beautiful art! She's got talent for sure!"
For winning, Gifford received $200 and her work will be recognized as the logo for the Loon and Fish Festival. While there were no specific parameters for the drawings, contestants were encouraged to submit two animals. Gifford submitted a colored pencil drawing of a loon and a trout.
Gifford said she was excited to win, especially because this is the first time she won an art contest.
"It's honestly pretty cool," Gifford said. "I've been trying to get my art out there and myself out there as an artist, which is kind of hard when you live in a small town. It's kind of hard to find opportunities to do commissions because not everyone is interested. So this is kind of a way of getting myself out there."
Gifford is an incoming junior at SSHS. While she's been drawing her whole life, she started taking it seriously when she was around 10 years old. She said she enjoys drawing animals, including birds and insects.
Gifford carries a sketchbook with her everywhere, so when the contest was announced, she sketched down her initial idea in class. After, she took the drawing home and sketched a final draft onto cold-pressed paper then painted over it with watercolor. She said the final draft took her around two hours total.
"I wanted to go with a rainbow trout," Gifford said. "But watercolor is kind of hard to work with and so I had to paint over the fish with a layer of blue to kind of simulate that it was underwater. So the colors got a little muddled. So it doesn't exactly look like a rainbow trout, but it's a fish."
After Gifford graduates high school, she said she plans to attend Chemeketa Community College outside of Salem, Oregon to pursue an art career. She also plans to apply for the AAI art scholarship in her senior year.
She said she's excited to get her art out there because art is a vital medium of expression.
"Art has been part of human culture for years," Gifford said. "I think that without art, life would be incredibly, incredibly dull."
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