Allentown’s Julie Scesney created this winning poster for the Allentown Lions Club’s Peace Poster Contest. She will receive a $50 U.S. Savings Bond. ALLENTOWN – In a 12-year-old’s perfect world, Canada waves across the ocean to an ecstatic Africa while the United States shares a magic moment with Mexico as other countries joyfully carry on.
Julie Scesney, whose imagination created the gleeful geography for the Lions International Peace Poster Contest, won at the local level with her entry.
“The Peace Poster chairman chose six top posters from nearly 60 entered posters, and the club was asked to vote on the best poster based on personal appeal,” Alfred Mottola, of the Allentown Lions Club, said.
The Allentown Lions Club sponsored the contest locally for students in sixth, seventh and eighth grades. Each poster was judged on originality, artistic merit, and expression of the contest’s theme.
“Peace Around the World” was the theme of the 2007-08 poster contest, and students were encouraged to visually depict their interpretation of this theme in their art classes.
Julie, a seventh-grader at the Upper Freehold Regional Elementary/Middle School, said she worked on her poster for an hour total during two art periods.
“It’s kind of like a vision for how perfect the world would be if everyone was friendly to each other,” Julie said of her poster.
Julie said she enjoyed participating in the contest because she believes peace is important and she also likes drawing.
The club awarded her a $50 U.S. Savings Bond for her winning entry.
She said she will save the bond and use it toward college costs.
“I definitely plan on going to college to design school,” she said. “I want to be a fashion designer when I grow up.”
The Allentown Lions Club will send her submission on to compete at two different state levels. The winner of the competition’s state level will go on to compete against contestants from all over the world.
Mottola said the Lions Club believes the contest is important because “it gives the typical student with average art ability a chance to be part of an internationally recognized art competition.”
At the international level, judges from the art, peace, youth, education and media communities select one grand-prize winner and 23 merit award winners. The grand-prize winner will receive a trip to a special award ceremony at Lions Day with the United Nations in New York City, where the winning artist will be presented with an engraved plaque and a cash prize of $2,500.