BY SPECIAL TO THE MONITOR
EDINBURG — Keep Texas Beautiful and the Texas Department of Transportation recently selected a student from the Edinburg school district as one of the winners of its annual Don’t mess with Texas K-12 Art Contest.
Edgar Leal, an 11th-grade student at Edinburg North High School, placed third out of 3,793 students who submitted entries from 308 schools throughout Texas.
Leal said that he felt inspired when creating his artwork, which featured a muscular bull.
“A Texas bull came to mind, because nothing says don’t mess with Texas than a big muscular guy,” he said.
According to Keep Texas Beautiful, the 13 winning designs will be showcased in the 2019 Don’t mess with Texas calendar and will be highlighted on the Don’t mess with Texas and Keep Texas Beautiful websites. The students’ artwork will also be featured at the 2018 Keep Texas Beautiful annual conference this month.
Leal and each of the winners received a Samsung Galaxy tablet donated by Samsung. The teacher who rep-resented each of the winning students received a $100 H-E-B/Central Market gift card.
“Edgar’s an extremely talented young man with a bright future ahead of him. Despite being a stand-out artist already, he’s also very teachable, always willing to accept advice and criticism and always open to suggestions for the sake of improving,” said Manuel Saenz Jr., head of the Edinburg North Fine Arts Department. “As an art teacher, I couldn’t ask for a better student to work with. I feel tremendous satisfaction knowing that Edgar’s hard work paid off.”
Saenz said that he was very pleased with the outcomes of all of his students, especially since it was the first time Edinburg North participated in this annual competition.
“I’m really proud of our ENHS student-artists who entered the state contest,” Saenz said. “Texas is a big state and Edinburg North had more finalists than any other school in Texas. So yes, it’s a tremendous accomplishment.”
The contest, which is open to kindergarten through 12th-grade students, is a joint effort by Keep Texas Beautiful and the Texas Department of Transportation to encourage young Texans to keep Texas roadways and the environment clean and free of litter.
More information, including how to request your free 2018 or upcoming 2019 calendar is available at https://ktb.org/artcontest.
