Juniors Ashley Morgan and Caroline Mills won state medals at the 2014 Visual Arts Scholastic Event (VASE) April 4 and 5 at Bryan High School.

VASE is hosted by the Texas Art Education Association. Students are allowed to bring two pieces of art each and present their artwork to a juror. If given a rating of VI, meaning superior, they can be selected to qualify for state. Then, the artwork is judged at the state level and students are given a state medal if rated VI once again.

Morgan and Mills were two out of 1,626 students who qualified for state with more than 22,836 pieces of artwork. Of these pieces, 818 won state medals. Morgan’s work, “Pre-Columbian Me,” is a cast of her face molded in clay. Mill submitted two photographs she took on a safari in Africa last summer.

“I really wanted to capture what it’s like to be on a reserve and see the animals not in a closed environment,” Mills said. “I was visiting family. My dad is South African and his whole side of the family lives in South Africa.”

“Kruger Kritters,” one of the pictures taken by Mills, shows two lionesses with a cub in between. The other picture, “You’ve been Spotted,” features a leopard.

“While in the jeep, the leopard came up to me,” Mills said. “It was about an arm’s length away when I took the picture.”

See artwork and prior story here.