COOS BAY — Moments after learning she’d won the Coos Art Museum’s Vision 2008 high school art competition, Becky Chierichetti was sad.

She was saying goodbye to her painting.

The Southwestern Oregon Community College Foundation, which sponsors the contest, will own her painting, “Regal,” at the end of the exhibit. The award Chierichetti won, Best in Show, comes with a $250 purchase prize and a two-year tuition waiver at Southwestern.



“I was almost hoping I wouldn’t win so I wouldn’t have to lose it,” said Chierichetti, a junior at Brookings-Harbor High School. “I have a high enough gpa that they would waive my tuition anyway. I’m losing my painting for something I don’t even need.”

That’s not to say she wasn’t excited about winning.

“This is, like, the crowning achievement of my life so far,” she said. “It’s just, like, made my decade.”

But after spending two class periods a day for six weeks painting her majestic lion, she wanted to take it home.

Her mood brightened when foundation Director Marie Simonds told her the foundation would give her a print of the painting.

“It looks like you could touch it and it would be soft,” Simonds said, pointing to the lion’s fur.

The painting got a lot of attention at the opening reception March 7, when the awards were presented. Announcing the winner, college President Dr. Judith Hansen got out only the words, “Becky, if I say your name right …,” before being interrupted by cheers as students realized it was Chierichetti.

The ceremony, held in the expanded Mabel Hansen Gallery, now twice its former size, was packed with about 135 students and assorted parents, while about 20 others stood out in the hall. The exhibit, which continues through April 12, includes 97 works by 78 students at 10 high schools in Southern Oregon.

Four awards were given for each grade level in addition to the top three purchase prizes. North Bend junior Cassie Mostert won First in Show for “Padmé Amidala,” a magazine mosaic of Natalie Portman’s character in “Star Wars,” and Bandon sophomore Kacy Crook won Second in Show for her acrylic portrait, “Bob Marley.” Mostert and Crook both received tuition waivers along with prizes of $100 and $75 respectively.

Chierichetti said she was surprised to receive the biggest award.

“I was expecting John Castaldi to win,” she said, naming the Bandon junior who won the contest in 2006 and placed second in his grade this year.

Though she won ribbons in both of the previous art contests she entered, Chierichetti considers herself less experienced, describing “Regal” as all she can remember of her art life. It’s only her second work on canvas and her third with acrylic paint.

She explained the process of making it, from tracing an enlarged image of her initial drawing from an overhead projector to adding detail in layers, noting her struggle to replicate the two-toned fur of a lion in the area between the eyes and nose.

The problems she had with the painting might have been indirectly responsible for its success, Chierichetti suggested. She said that when she started working on the project, she was in it to win, meaning she had to be prepared to let go of the painting. But along the way, she became disappointed with it and concluded its chances of winning were slim. Then she decided to keep working on it for herself, and that’s when it got good.

“It’s different when you do something for someone else or money,” she said. “When I’m doing it for me, when I’m doing it for art, it comes out different.”