Sacajawea seventh-grade artist wins city access cover design contest

Students 18 and under were invited to participate in a Wastewater Access Cover design contest and they responded in droves, with 280 students of all ages submitting designs in the contest sponsored by Spokane Arts, the City of Spokane, the Lands Council and The Spokesman-Review.

Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward unveiled the winner, Sacajawea Middle School seventh grader Soryanna Taylor, at Monday’s city council meeting. Woodward also presented the design of second-place winner Kaua Robertson, who was not in attendance.

“Aren’t these nice?” Woodward said as the crowd in the council chambers applauded.

Taylor’s design features the sun rising over a bridge with fish swimming in the water beneath it. The word “Spokane” is etched in a half circle along the curve of the rising sun.

“The sun represents the Native Americans and how they were the Children of the Sun,” Taylor said. “The bridge is the Monroe Street Bridge. It just kind of represented Spokane and the community.”

This is the third such design contest, which is held every five years. That is how often the city of Spokane puts in a bulk order for wastewater access covers, typically called manhole covers. As the winner, Taylor’s design will be cast into the iron covers as they are made and they’ll be ready to go whenever a cover needs to be replaced over the next five years.

Students were instructed to design something reflective of the ecology, water, nature, creatures or landscape of the Inland Northwest for the contest.

Spokane Arts Program Manager Karen Mobley said they were looking for a design that would be easy to reproduce in cast iron. The design needed to have clean lines and not a lot of fine details. “Some of those drawings were really beautiful, but they weren’t appropriate to make into cast iron,” she said.

Taylor’s design stood out, however. “It works really well,” Mobley said. “The design needed to be very graphic and easy to reproduce.”

Mobley said she was pleased by the variety and volume of contest entries. “It’s actually quite a lot of kids, but some art teachers actually assigned it to every student in class,” she said. “They came from all over the place: middle schools, elementary schools, Catholic schools, individual kids.”

Taylor, 13, said she’s only entered one contest before, a T-shirt design contest for Tom’s Turkey Drive. She didn’t win. She heard about the wastewater access cover design contest from her art teacher. “I figured why not,” she said. “I never thought I would win. It was something for fun.”

She’s involved in several different creative pursuits. She plays the piano, sings in the school choir and also paints. “I’ve always just enjoyed the arts,” she said.

Now she’ll have a chance to see her art on the streets of Spokane for decades to come. She said she’ll probably go looking for a manhole cover with her art on it once they’re made. “It’s hard to imagine,” she said. “Just walking down the street, I could find my design.”

She said she likes that her art will contribute something to the community. And with this win under her belt, she’s feeling inspired to enter more art competitions.

As the first-place winner, Taylor also received a $100 prize and tickets to the Blue Zoo, an interactive aquarium in the NorthTown Mall. Fourteen-year-old Robertson, also a student at Sacajawea Middle School, earned a $50 prize and tickets to the Blue Zoo as the second-place winner.

The four runners-up were: Freeman Middle School students Levi Chisholm, 14, and Preston Eigenhuis, 13; Madison Key, 13, of West Valley City School; and Nadia Kitch, 10, of the Pioneer School. All six of the top winners had their work published in The Spokesman-Review.