Capitol artwork
LOREN BENOIT/Press Brooke McClurkin will travel to the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., next month to be commemorated for her artwork titled ‘Potato Farmer.’ Potato Farmer’ is a 22-by-24-inch graphite rendition of a pensive, old farmer in overalls.
By HOLLY PASZCZYNSKA
Staff Writer
Brooke McClurkin will be traveling to Washington, D.C., next month to be honored for her artwork titled ‘Potato Farmer.’ The 18-year-old Coeur d’Alene High School senior was chosen as this year’s winner of the Congressional Art Competition for Idaho’s First District.
The Congressional Institute has sponsored the competition since 1982, and encourages and supports visual arts across the nation. It is open to high school students, and since it started, more than 650,000 students have taken part.
“This is bigger than just winning a state competition,” said Terri Leonard, her art teacher. “This is the Congressional Art Competition, and Congressman Labrador, from all the pieces that were submitted from all over the state, chose Brooke’s artwork that is going to hang in the United States Capitol from June of 2018 to June of 2019.”
McClurkin will be leaving her home in Dalton Gardens next month with her dad to visit Washington, D.C., and enjoy some time touring the district. She hasn’t been to the nation’s capital since her eighth-grade class trip several years ago, and is looking forward to the experience.
“I’m really excited,” she said.
‘Potato Farmer’ is a 22-by-24-inch graphite rendition of a pensive, old farmer in overalls, crouching in the foreground, as if his moment of pause will be short-lived as he looks to the distance.
That image is a familiar one to McClurkin. She explained that her great-grandpa is the subject of the piece, which is based on a family photograph.
“It’s funny, because that picture of him has been hanging up in the hallway at my house, and I walk by it all the time. I really wanted to enter a piece, and I wanted to do some sort of farming, or Idaho Potatoes, or something oriented toward that, and I was just walking past it in the hallway one day again and I saw it and thought, ‘Oh, I can make this work.’”
McClurkin has been a full-time student at North Idaho College, and has only been in Leonard’s art class this semester. She will compete in track and field at Lewis-Clark State College and will pursue a business degree.
“I’ll take a few art classes while I am there and just see where it goes,” she explained. “Art is more of a hobby for me. I really enjoy it.”