Nelson County High School student Marcus Briggs won first place in the Congressional Art Contest.
His piece, “Friends at School,” was installed in the US Capitol and will remain on exhibit for one year.
Not all members of Congress participate in the annual Congressional Art Contest, for which art-jurors select each district’s top high school student art.
Congressman Bob Good, himself an art-maker in his youth, has several times.
Briggs made an unusual photo showing himself and four friends seen from below while looking down into the mouth of a cleaned-out empty oil barrel. The camera, triggered with a timer, was looking upward from the bottom of the barrel, toward the students. The battered, dented barrel’s inside walls form a strange lumpy ovoid shape that frames their faces.
The peers’ benevolent visages peer down to the camera, giving the appearance of looking right at the viewer, but most faces are arranged at odd angles. One is even upside down. Their fingers flash “peace” signs or “love you” gestures. Beyond their heads, blazing brilliant white light backlights their hair. The students found the empty and unlidded steel barrel in their school’s welding shop class staging area during photography class.
The photo was part of a class assignment about gathering photos outdoors in the schoolyard, but all choice of subject matter was up to the students.
“Overall, it’s an arresting image,” Briggs’ instructor, Terry Ward, who teaches art and photography at Nelson County High School, said. “A typical person sees thousands of faces, so usually, faces are boring.”
Ward said the circular border was unusual.
“In a way, it looks like: ‘Did I die and reach afterlife? Are these my (Gen-Z, hippie-ish, dyed-hair) welcoming angels?’ or, with the barrel’s visible oil residue and drippy scuzz, ‘Did I fall down a well and here are my rescuers?’”
Ward said sometimes images that “break the rules (of visual composition)” successfully, actually are more compelling.
“For instance, usually, one doesn’t want to aim a camera right at the sun because the sky then whites-out and the image looks just amateurish,” Ward said, “but, with the sun right above everyone’s heads, it actually enhances the picture’s power.”
Ward said most art jurors have a bias in favor of processes needing talented hand-skill (like painting or drawing); on the other hand, in photography, because it’s “the camera that does the work,” only a very exceptional image ever can hope to win first place.
Briggs’ photo beat dozens of competing photos, drawings, paintings and mixed-media artworks from many other high schools.
“Not only is the layout really impressive, but also, the actual imagery is inspiring: it’s simply (but brilliantly) ‘friends at school,’ and all of them are paying no attention whatsoever to anyone’s race, religion or economic class. We need more of that these days,” Ward said.
Briggs’ photo shows students of many racial backgrounds and from different levels of the economic spectrum: from sometimes-homeless to individuals living at high-dollar addresses. In public schools, ideally, all may interact with a presumption of equality. Without ever having meant to be symbols of equality, “Friends at School” conveys the joy of human interaction when no political or social labels exist.
With so much racial strife in the U.S. since the death of George Floyd and also with global political-religious tension flaming since the Hamas attack on Israel’s civilians in October 2023, “a picture of young school friends just being friends and seeing *nothing* of religion, of politics, of race is an inspiring and heart-warming image,” Ward said. “The MLK ideal of just simple friendship without social barriers really shows here, just naturally, and, by damn, it’s beautiful.”
In the Congressional Art Contest, the various high school art teachers in participating districts across America choose their students’ best pictures to send to participating members’ art juror/s. The art-jurors then pick the district’s best youth art. First-place winners are awarded a certificate and their image is exhibited for a year in certain corridors of the U.S. Capitol alongside other districts winners.
In a speech at the LeHane Events Center in Lynchburg during the 2024 Congressional Art Contest winners’ ceremony for the Fifth District, Good said he himself used to make art in his younger days and he hopes someday to get back to artmaking. Good said sponsoring the competition is a way to support culture and to foster artistic activity in the next generation, regardless of anyone’s politics.
The United States Congress student art competition began in 1982.
