More than $2,500 in prizes will be awarded tonight during the 16th annual Have a HeART for ART at the Arlington Resort Hotel and Spa, 239 Central Ave., with the artwork displayed during Gallery Walk.
The event is held in memory of Michelle Lee Bartlett, a 1998 Lakeside graduate who died in 2003 due to an undiagnosed heart condition.
“The Bartlett family started it for their daughter, Michelle Bartlett, after she passed at the University of Arkansas,” Alexis Evans, one of the organizers of the event, said. “The Junior Auxiliary began working with the Bartlett family to keep it going. Every school in Garland County is invited to participate. We just have a few this year that did not.”
Students from kindergarten through 12th grade entered the competition, Evans said, and three prizes will be given per grade. Overall awards worth $100 will be given for kindergarten through sixth and seventh through 12th, and the Michelle Bartlett Award, a $150 prize, will be the overall award for all age groups.
“We give … a gift card this year to Hobby Lobby, so that they can go and get more art supplies,” she said. “They’re taught a heart-healthy message at school, and then their artwork has to include something with the heart. It can be an actual heart, or it can be something just positive and good. It’s exciting, and it’s gotten bigger and bigger.”
Art teachers will also be eligible for a $75 prize for their own artwork, and students earning honorable mention will receive an art kit.
The event has typically been held at Emergent Arts, but it has outgrown the space, Evans said.
“Each teacher is able to select two entries per grade level, and if a school has two — like Lakeside, they have two art teachers,” she said. “So they’ve got double the entries because each art teacher is selecting from their art classes. I would actually say we probably have 200 (entries). Last year, I wish we would have counted how many people came through, because it was packed. We’ve planned for over 300 people to be at the event, and then that’s not counting if people come down on the Gallery Walk.”
Evans said the younger students’ awards will be presented at 6 p.m. with the older students’ awards set for 7 p.m.
“They’ll be displayed in the Arlington Hotel, Conference Room B as part of the Gallery Walk,” she said. “It’s going to start at 5:30 (p.m.) We’re going to do an awards presentation for each set of grade levels. So the K through six, we’re going to do an awards presentation, and seven through 12, we’ll do an awards presentation. But people can just come through and walk through and see the kids’ art.”
Entries in the 3-dimensional division of last year’s Have a HeART for ART took different approaches to incorporating a heart into the artwork. (Courtesy Junior Auxiliary and the Bartlett family)
Art from the seventh-grade division of last year’s Have a HeART for ART garnered a total of five awards. (Courtesy Junior Auxiliary and the Bartlett family)
Entries in the kindergarten and first-grade divisions of last year’s Have a Heart for ART consisted of multiple media. (Courtesy Junior Auxiliary and the Bartlett family)