A fanciful vision of a
lunar traffic jam won the first annual NASA Lunar Art Contest sponsored by
NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.
A work by Justin Burns, a sophomore at the University of Memphis,
depicts a cartoon-like motorcyclist on her air cushioned bike leading a
long line of traffic in a tube stretching across the otherwise barren lunar
landscape. A city under a dome stands in the background.
"The Lunar Art contest allows students from the creative arts
disciplines to become involved and excited about the nation's space
exploration program. It also enables us to see the future from very
different and important perspectives," said Richard Antcliff, director of
Langley's Advanced Planning and Partnership Office.
A total of 26 college and high school students from around the country
entered the contest with paintings, posters, design packages, and
sculpture. Judges rated the art on the basis of originality, creativity,
artistic elements, and if the concept was valid for harsh lunar conditions.
The contest encouraged university and high school art and design students
to partner with science and engineering departments to create art
representative of living and working on the moon.
The goal is for students in arts, science and engineering to
collaboratively engage in NASA's mission to return humans to the moon by
2020, and eventually journey on to Mars and other destinations in the solar
system. Such collaboration may generate new ideas for living and working in
extra-terrestrial environments, resulting in more successful long-duration
space missions.
The top four college-level and top two high school-level entries will
be exhibited this summer at Langley, the Virginia Air and Space Center in
Hampton, Va., and at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The entries also will
be posted on the NASA website.
Second place in the college group went to "A busy day on the moon," by
Johnathan Culpepper, a senior at Medgar Evers College in the City
University of New York. Lann Brumlik and Corey DiRutigliano, a team of
graduate design students from University of Cincinnati, earned third place
for their poster "Enabling Exploration." Ellen Ladwig, a fine arts major
from University of Missouri, took fourth place for an oil painting she
calls "Perseid Meteor Shower on a Newly Terra-Formed Moon."
High school students Asa Shultz from Virginia and William Zhang from
California tied for first place in the high school group. Shultz is a
home-schooled senior enrolled in Covenant Academy who lives in Forest, Va.
Zhang is a sophomore who attends Skoldberg Art Academy in San Diego.
The contest was co-sponsored by Christopher Newport University in
Newport News, Va. The university provided small cash awards for top prizes,
and the NASA Center for Educational Technologies at Wheeling Jesuit
University in Wheeling, W.Va., provided a Web site to support the contest.
SOURCE NASA
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