Silver Spring, MD – The NASAO Center for Aviation Research and Education proudly announces the winners of this year’s National Aviation Art Contest for young people.

 Ages 6-9:

            1^st Place – Alexander Brown (age 9), Massachusetts

            2^nd Place – Dennis Shen (age 9), California

            3^rd Place – Caleb Goodin (age 9), Pennsylvania

 Ages 10-13:

            1^st Place – Raymond Tsai (age 13), California

            2^nd Place – Devin Turner (age 11), Wisconsin

            3^rd Place – Justin Davis (age 13), Kentucky

 Ages 14-17:

            1^st Place – Kathryn Lee (age 16), Texas

            2^nd Place – James Lincke (age 16), Pennsylvania

            3^rd Place – Courtney Kinard (age 16), Pennsylvania

Twenty-nine state government aviation agencies, across the nation, organized state-wide art contests this year. They then submitted each state’s first, second and third place winners, in each of the three age groupings, to the NASAO Center for Aviation Research and Education which managed the national competition.  Over 7,000 individual drawings and paintings by young Americans between the ages of six and seventeen were entered in this year’s contest.  This year’s contest theme of “100 Years of Powered Flight” was highly appropriate as the nation is celebrating the centennial of the Wright Brothers aviation achievements in 1903.

 The artwork for the national competition was reviewed by a distinguished panel including, Deborah Gallaway of the Centennial of Flight Commission, Suzanne Lewis of the National Air and Space Museum; Margaret Finch, a well known artist who specializes in aviation and automotive art, and Byron Peck an artist well known for his murals and trompe-l’oeil which grace dozens of public spaces across the country.  The overall contest was directed by Rhonda Jackson, the NASAO Center’s project manager.

Each of the young artists who placed in the national competition has been invited to participate in the National Aeronautic Association’s (NAA) 2003 Spring Awards Reception and Ceremony to be held at the historic College Park Aviation Museum in College Park, Maryland on the evening of March 31, 2003.  There, in addition to being recognized for their artistic contributions to the aviation community, they will have an opportunity to mix and mingle with legendary aviators, astronauts and recent aviation record setters.  They will also receive a special award certificate and ribbon, along with a framed reproduction of their work. 

The original copies of their award winning art have already been submitted by the NASAO Center to the International Aviation Art Contest sanctioned by the Federation Aeronautique International.  In April of this year, their work will be judged in Lausanne, Switzerland against the aviation art created by other young people from around the world.  The NASAO Center’s Ms. Jackson noted that in the past several years, many U.S. students have won bronze, silver and gold medals at the international competition.

Prior to attending the ceremony at College Park, the artists and their parents and guardians will be treated to a special tour and lunch at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in downtown Washington, D.C. 

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the NASAO Center provide the award recipients airfare and hotel in the nation’s capital for the ceremony. 

The national art contest is sponsored annually by the NASAO Center for Aviation Research and Education, NAA, NASA, and FAA, and has been held for the past fifteen years.  Electronic reproductions of the 2003 award winning art may viewed at NASAO’s web page at www.nasao.org