Winning artist
How many Spokane-area fifth-graders know that the Washington state fish is the steelhead trout? How many know what it looks like, its migration patterns and that it’s endangered?
The answer is one, for certain – although, most likely, many more – and her name is Cassia Fox. She will be in the fifth grade this fall at Evergreen Elementary School in the Mead School District.
However, fourth grade is a year Cassia will not likely forget.
Cassia entered the national Wildlife Forever state fish art contest held each year by the conservation group. She researched the Washington state fish, wrote a report and created an image of the fish to satisfy the entry requirements, which, according to her father, Dan Fox, were completed just one hour before the deadline of midnight March 31.
“We got it to FedEx just under the wire,” said Dan Fox. After hearing about the contest from her dad, Cassia entered it with enormous enthusiasm.
She said she has always been an artist. She has notebooks containing drawings she has done during the past seven years. The 9-year-old has graduated from stick figures to fairy-tale figures to wildlife with seeming ease.
Unlike past drawings, however, the state fish project required an enormous amount of time and energy to complete – 11 drawing hours, by her family’s estimation.
When asked about the reception her winning entry received at school, Cassia replied with a grin, “My teacher showed the class the drawing, and we looked at the other drawings, and for some reason, they thought mine was the best one of all the fourth-grade drawings.”
It wasn’t the first art contest Cassia has entered and won. When Cassia was in the third grade, her drawing of horses won a contest to design the cover of Evergreen Elementary School’s yearbook. “I almost fainted when I saw my picture on the cover of the yearbook. It was kind of a good shock,” she said.
After that experience, “I wanted to have a second chance at winning an art contest, so I entered the Wildlife Forever contest,” she said. “I looked at a lot of pictures (of steelhead trout). I did Internet research and looked at pages and pages of Google images.”
Cassia used the pictures only as reference for her artwork. Her final drawing is a combination of about five photographs she chose for reference purposes. Her ideas for the background came from her personal rock collection – she also is fond of geology and science.
Cassia says she pictures herself as a writer and illustrator of children’s books, or possibly an artist or a painter, when she grows up.
For now, though, she enjoys spending her free time drawing pictures and making cards for her family and friends. She also enjoys building houses and cafés out of Lego building blocks.
When asked what makes her proudest of her winning artwork, Cassia smiles and says, “I think it’s my best one not because I won but because I worked so hard on it.”