Eight Utah students win $1,000 college savings scholarships

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Contact: Bryn Ramjoue’, Marketing Director, 801.321.7161, bramjoue@my529.org

December 14, 2022

Contest invited students to design original artwork for bookmarks

(Salt Lake City) Eight Utah students have each won a $1,000 college savings scholarship for their artwork in the 2022 Make Your Mark bookmark contest. The contest, sponsored by my529, invited students throughout the state to create an original bookmark design.

Guest judges selected the winning entries with two winners from each of four age categories.

Grades K-3

The winners in this category are Grace, a second-grade student at American Preparatory Academy charter school in Bluffdale, whose entry was selected by Utah Governor Spencer Cox; and Ryder, a third-grade student in Alpine School District, whose entry was selected by First Lady Abby Cox.

Grace says that she has always enjoyed art and loves to draw animals. “I was good at drawing other animals and the first thing that popped into my head was to draw a sloth. Then I came up with the idea that it could be reading a book upside down, ” she said.

Grace wants to study astronomy and become a successful astronomer. She hopes to someday send a person to Mars.

Ryder was inspired to draw the Bear Lake Monster from his family’s many trips to Bear Lake, where he loves to wake surf. He decided to mix the monster with a dragon reading a book.

Ryder says he was “blown away” when he found out that he won. He is excited to have some money saved for college. His future plans are to become a soccer player or a dentist.

Grades 4-6

Zamira, a fifth-grade home school student from American Fork, and Sai, a fifth-grade student at American Preparatory Academy charter school in South Jordan, submitted the winning entries judged by Maegan Castleton, the Utah Division of Multicultural Affairs graphic lead and program specialist.

Zamira described her design of the person sitting on the moon as being inspired by the DreamWorks introduction in movies, and how that reminds her of feeling inspired and transported to a fantasy world when she reads. “I had a dream that I was in my bed and everything was floating, including my books,” she says.

Zamira says that she will use the scholarship money to help pay for school supplies and to get into a great university. “I have always wanted to go to Harvard!” says Zamira.

Sai says, “My inspiration for my drawing is that I have always loved reading books and the way they spark your imagination. I feel like I can travel to different worlds like Hogwarts while reading the Harry Potter series (my current favorite series) and accompany Harry and his friends in their wild adventures.”

Sai painted a rocket traveling through space visiting imaginative locations along the way.

Sai’s favorite subjects are math and history. She has plans to study architecture and mathematics when she goes to college. Sai stated that the scholarship will be very helpful to her for her future academic pursuits.

Grades 7-8

Winners in grades 7-8 are Kezia, an eighth-grader in Granite School District, and Jared, an eighth-grader in Alpine School District. Entries for this category were selected by Kim Ziebarth, the Utah State System of Higher Education associate commissioner of technical education.

Kezia says, “My inspiration for this piece came from my love of silhouettes in art. I also love to read because I feel like I get to escape from this world to something new and exciting.”

She explains that she did several different sketches before settling on this one. Kezia likes how the rainbow faded to each color. She likes watching different ideas take shape when she is working on art.

Kezia is currently focused on completing junior high and high school, and she has plans to continue her education in college. She enjoys debate and she might be interested in becoming an attorney.

She says, “I know that will take a lot of studying and time in school, but I am glad I can start saving for it now.”

Jared describes his bookmark as a tree with roots coming down into books.

“The tree is like our mind, and the book feeds our mind with knowledge. The books are different genres, representing the different things we can learn from different types of books,” he said.

Jared would like to attend Brigham Young University and says that the scholarship will help him pay for his classes there.

Grades 9-12

The winning entries in the high school category are Alyssa, an 11^th-grader in the Granite School District, and Susannah, a 12^th-grader in the Logan School District. Entries were judged by Ali Hagen, one of the 2016 winners of the Make Your Mark contest.

Susannah was unavailable for comment.

Alyssa explains her drawing by saying, “I love to design and draw characters, and I love to read, so this contest was the perfect chance to combine the two. I know I’ve spent many late nights with a good book—staying up way longer than I had planned—telling myself I’ll go to sleep after ‘just one more chapter,’ so that was an obvious choice for the text of my bookmark.”

Alyssa says that she based the design of her bookmark on the style she saw used on some tarot cards combined with inspiration from Alice in Wonderland as Alice falls down the rabbit hole.

She says that she “greatly appreciates the scholarship funds” and plans to use them toward college where she would like to study digital art and explore various career paths that would allow her to continue doing what she loves.

Photos of the students and high-resolution images of the bookmarks are available to the media upon request.

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