High school, elementary school and homeschooled students were given a challenge earlier this spring. They could use pens, paper and whatever else available to create posters for Piedmont Soil and Water Conservation District. The only instruction was that it had to be water themed, as this year’s focus was “One Water”.

Several Fuqua School students were also among this year’s winners. On the front row, from left, are Connor Amos, Wyatt Houston, Russell Clark, Chase Frank, Jaime Fifield and Charlotte Freitag. On the back row, Owen Baird, McKinley Towler, Lydia Hazlegrove, Jack Eggleston, Tucker Frank and Brady Shaver.

Hundreds of students took up the challenge and that’s not an exaggeration. By the end of Piedmont’s Youth Conservation Poster Contest in May, more than 480 posters had come in from across the region. They came in from Prince Edward County Elementary, from Fuqua School, from homeschooled students and there were even a couple from Amelia High, to go along with some from local Girl Scout troops.

“Each participant created a water themed poster and learned that we all share the same water through the water cycle and watershed concepts,” said Kelly Atkinson with Piedmont Soil and Water.

All poster participants received a certificate and bookmark, while winners received ribbons. When it came time to judge, the Piedmont officials turned it over to someone who knows a bit about art: Longwood Center for Visual Arts director Rachel Ivers. In the end, the grand winner was Ethan Russell, a 10th-grade student in Caroline Stargardt’s Career Technical Education (CTE) class at Amelia County High. You can find his poster on display in the window of Red Door 104 Studio in downtown Farmville. And don’t worry about missing it. That poster will be up in the window throughout the month of June.

As for all of the other first-place winning posters, they, along with Russell’s artwork, will be forwarded now to the Virginia Association of Soil and Water Conservation District, to compete in the statewide contest. That takes place in October.

Prince Edward Elementary also had two students win the overall district awards. They are, from left, first grader Austin Zheng and third grader Addison Zirkle.

“We’d just like to say congratulations to all the artists on a job well done,” Atkinson said.