“There’s an old Mexican proverb, “Dime con quién andas, y te diré quién eres” or translated: "Tell me with whom you walk, and I'll tell you who you are.” We can learn a lot about a person by looking at the people they hang out with and the way they spend their time. So we want to know: Tell us who you are! Show us who you spend time with, what you see in your everyday life, and where you want to go. Describe yourself and your life with the people, places, and things around you.”

The words above were our instructions to students entering our 2023 Design Contest: Tell us who you are in the people, places, and things around you. We wanted to give students a broad enough theme that they could take it and run with it. This was a very tough contest to judge, and there was a lot of back-and-forth between the panelists over which prizes to award. All of the students should be proud of their entries, but here are our final choices:

Grand Prize: Cole Beaver, Del Norte High School

Congratulations, Cole! Your artistic skill and the symbolism you utilized to portray your “one-ness” with New Mexico is what won the judges over.

First Place: Nina Ferguson, Centennial High School

From the judges:

A fantastic and playful piece of art; the judges loved Nina’s interpretation of the prompt when she very literally showed us who her friends are! Great attention to detail and a compelling composition. Keep capturing these amazing moments, Nina!

Second Place: Sean Gonzales, nex+Gen Academy

From the judges:

Sean’s artwork drew the judges in with its rolling lines toward the setting sun, but it was the vibrant colors that captured our hearts. The panel loved the warm light bathing the worn desert landscape. Strong composition.

Third Place: Max Teran, Las Cruces High School

From the judges:

Wow! Max’s edge-to-edge details are what really secured this piece as a finalist. The panel was impressed with Max’s storytelling ability; the home as a beginning foundation, and Max’s thoughts, ideas, interests, all billowing out beyond…

Honorable Mention: Taymii, Hayes Middle School

From the judges:

Taymii’s lumen print stood out to the judges because of Taymii’s courage to think outside the box and use a medium we have not yet seen submitted to the contest. We found the piece to be unique, visually striking and very personal with the use of nature. This is an amazing way to capture nature in a nontraditional way. One judge stated, “Your print reminded me of how the same techniques are used for making t -shirt designs using a technique called screen printing! It is awesome that you are capturing nature with your art Taymii.” Thank you for sharing your love of nature, family and exploration with us.

New in 2023! Momentos Studio Award: Luis Cereceres, Highland Middle School

From Juan Carlos of Momentos Studios, one of our guest judges:

As all creators know, our ideas are always coming out of our heads! They don’t stop. Luis’s depiction reminded me of how it feels to be a creator and it reminded me of a very similar piece I made. One of our goals is to share a moment with our community, and we want to inspire artists to do the same. I feel like Luis’s piece does exactly that. - Juan Carlos, Momentos Studios

Best Of…

During our annual student art contest we get so many awesome entries that we’ve had to branch out from the standard 1st, 2nd, 3rd place prizes! Each year we award a “Best of” for each grade level. This year we have two unique occurrences: first, we received no submissions from 9th graders. Not one! So there is no “Best of 9th grade” for this reason. Secondly, we only received one submission from 12th grade. Normally, we would avoid giving the same student two awards, but we felt strongly that the 12th grade entry deserved to win 1st place.