Great Bend High School’s Art Club recently competed in a Community Window Decorating Contest in which they won 2nd and were rewarded with a $1,000 prize. Their theme was “Holiday Cheer” and they plan to use their money to visit The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri. 

Art club director and art teacher Ms. Laurel Haley said, “It feels awesome winning. It. feels. awesome.” 

Freshman Brooke Bodine said, “It makes me feel really good because we worked really hard on those windows and it’s really nice. Ms. Haley had some nice tips about knowing what we’re doing.”

Freshman Gracie Crathorne said, “It makes me feel really happy. Just getting to do it and it looks really good.” 

Haley explained, “What we did is I gave every student a large piece of paper and they kind of created like two teams and amongst those teams, they designed a prototype and the day we were going to paint it we just picked out which ones we felt stood out the most.”

Haley said, “Me and the students worked Saturday from 12pm to 5pm and then on Monday, they worked from 3:30pm to 5:30pm. Then there were additional hours that I spent painting”

The club worked hard and finished the painting in a fashioned time limit to reach what they expected or even better. 

Bodine said, “I really liked the way it turned out. I think it turned out really good.”

Ms. Haley was unable to tell me which students worked the hardest because all of them put in equal effort to achieve what they wanted. 

Haley said, “I did have maybe one or two people that mainly worked on the designs, but I had 10-15 people show up each day to put in the effort for the project, so it really was a communal achievement.” 

Each student worked as a team and was proud of their outcome. The windows are located at Bauer Pike Law on 1310 Kansas Avenue, Great Bend, Kansas.