Color Maryland Green
The artist and the photographer seek the mysteries and the adventure of experience in nature.
–Ansel Adams
Step into a forest or sit by the side of a local river and close your eyes. When you open your eyes again, what do you see and feel?
Draw, write or photograph what you’re experiencing, and you can enter it into the 2014 Color Maryland Green contest. The winning videos, poems, drawings or photographs are rewarded with 2014 Maryland State Park Passports.
From mountains to lakes to farmland to Chesapeake Bay to the ocean, Mother Nature is ready to be your star. If you’re a student in grades K through 12, this is your chance to give her a showcase. Use crayons or paint to capture what you see. Sit by the water and write a poem. Or take a camera with you on a hike and record the beauty all around you.
Mary Ellen Geissenhainer, a regional artist and teacher at Eagle Cove School, finds great value in mixing art and nature. “Children’s lives are so structured and scheduled that it is more vital than ever that young people experience the spontaneity, glory, fierceness and quiet of nature in all its forms,” she says.
Translation to art brings us closer to both nature and people, she adds, as art is “a language others can understand by listening, viewing or reading.”
Color Maryland Green is sponsored by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and the Department of the Environment. Submit in any form, including photographs, paintings, sketches, computer design, crayons, markers, videos or poetry. Deadline is March 7.
Prizes in poetry, art and photography in four age groups plus one overall winner for video will be awarded at the Earth Day Celebration in Annapolis on April 22.