KIMBERLY, Wis.— A national art contest designed to show off love for your county prompted one student to get creative.

Sponsored by Americans for the Arts, the “I Love My County Because….” art contest was open to K-12 students nationwide. The goal was to get students to start a dialogue with each other to learn about responsibilities and leadership in the U.S. 

“My mom gave me the magazine with the article about it, so I was like, ‘Sure I’ll tried it,’” said Ella Stahmann, a seventh grader. “My friend had just showed me how to do digital art and so I did it on there.”

The John R. Gerritts Middle School student said she’s always like turning her creativity into art via a variety of different mediums. Ella Stahmann took on the challenge digitally; it would become her first digital art piece.

She spent more than 20 hours perfecting each pixel of a digitized picture of her pet chicken, Hermoine.

“I [showed] how half of our city is like farms and stuff,” Ella Stahmann said. “The other is neighborhoods and people, cities.”

Stahmann has always leaned into art. Her mom, Kati Stahmann, said it was only right to set a challenge for her daughter.

“She’s always drawing and creating and doing things, so I thought ‘Here’s a purpose; here’s a goal or something,’” said Kati Stahmann. “She’s always looking for inspiration or kind of, ‘What can I do with this?’ And we talked a bit about what really makes up our county.”

The contest awarded twelve first place prizes across the country. Ella Stahmann won, representing Wisconsin and her county of Outagamie. 

She said she hopes to keep getting better at art, and is already practicing for creating her next winning piece.