The majestic and varied landscapes of Wasatch County have inspired artists from across the globe since the early pioneers first settled here. Today our valley’s mountains, rivers, fields, farms, and skate parks are inspiring a whole new generation of young artists.

The year 2020 brought about a lot of change for everyone — in Wasatch County, a group of PTA presidents representing the district’s elementary, middle, and high schools, decided to change things up a bit too. After much deliberation and discussion, it was decided that Wasatch County would break away from the Parent-Teacher Association and create their own Wasatch Parent Network — the only thing holding them back was the PTA Reflections program. For those unfamiliar with Reflections, it is a nationally recognized art contest. The WPN wanted to make sure that students in Wasatch County could continue to participate in art competitions. So they rolled up their sleeves and went in search of ways to offer challenging opportunities for K-12 artists.

During a district meeting, it was mentioned that the Wasatch Center for Advanced Professional Studies (CAPS) was creating a website for their art contest — Emergence. Emergence’s goal is to help, “Grow Young Artists.” The contest’s art categories include 2D drawings, paintings, graphic designs, and photography in addition to 3D works like pottery and sculptures. This seemed like a perfect match. Angie Neuberger, President of the Wasatch High Wasatch Parent Network shared, “It really came down to the Wasatch County School District, the CAPS program, the Wasatch Parent Network, and Heber Valley Life Magazine, working together to create this amazing art contest. The hardest part was that each student could only enter one category — so they had to decide if it was going to be a painting or a photograph or whatever they liked best.”

Once submission and contest rules were decided things began to move fast. Open to all students in grades K-12 in Wasatch County School District the contest was announced in March with all entries being due just after Spring Break in April. Angie laughed as she shared, “We had 175 entries this year — our first year — which was just great and kind of a crazy time too. It was a bit tricky trying to find judges but we were really thrilled with the response from the students and those who volunteered to judge. We had six judges; all from the community and all involved with art in some way.”

The judges had a blast and said that it was really difficult to choose; however, they all mentioned that their favorite part of the process was reading the descriptions of the artwork. The theme for the 2021 Emergence art contest was “My Home Town”. The artists’ works, words, and how they related to the theme puts into perspective just how unique and amazing our home town is.

Angie explained that “I feel like with Reflections we couldn’t do anything like this, each school was always on their own – with this [Emergence] we all came together and we made it better.” Angie also shared that, “the way the Wasatch Parent Network, Wasatch County School District, the CAPS program, and Heber Valley Life came together to highlight the arts was just so amazing. I am so appreciative of the support everyone has given us to do our own thing. I love the name Emergence and everything that it encompasses . . . I just think the kids were so great with creating artwork that they are passionate about