Olympics of the VIsual Arts 2017

 Every year since I've retired, I've helped judge a statewide creative competition called Olympics of the Visual Arts, or OVA, and I've blogged about it here.  This year's event took place a couple of weeks ago.  My time judging was a whirlwind and I didn't get to see as much of the work as in previous years, plus I was wrestling with a camera problem so my pics are not great, but still I thought I'd share a taste of the kids' works with you here.  I was a judge in the painting category, where the theme had to do with optical illusions.  The students have a lot of options for how to approach their creations.  The piece above is elementary level, and directly below is a high school piece. 

My personal favorite painted illusion is shown below.  The only thing "real" on the table is the pencil.  Seriously. This is a middle school piece!  Pretty impressive, no?

I thought the elementary piece pictured below was a lot of fun, with the infinite reflection beginning with the 3-D element.  This piece was huge. 

 Another awesome middle school level work of art, below.

 Honestly, I only got to breeze through the work in the sculpture, architecture, photography, and illustration categories.  And I didn't get to see the fashion creations at all, which was kind of disappointing, since they are always so amazingly incredible.  Anyhow, here's a few more pics of what I did get to see. 

I don't know what the challenge was, but the piece below seems to have an an Alice in Wonderland/underwater tea party sort of theme, I think?

I'll close with one more optical illusion piece with a 3-dimensional element, created by a team of high school students. 

 To see work from previous years, and read more information about this event, you can check out my prior posts at these links from 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2013.