This year, seven art students will have their work featured at the Rodeo Art show during the Houston Livestock and Rodeo in February and March. The work was previously exhibited at the ISC building on Jan. 25, 2018.

Art teacher Shawna Billet’s art students Stephen Lawal(10), Thanh Le(10), Lacey Tostado(11), Tia Roberts(10), and Darwin Itzep’s art students Hasen Hamid, Kimberly Mendez(10) and Karen Lopez all had their work selected for this competition. Le, Tostado and Mendez are all finalists in the competition.

The Rodeo consists of livestock and horse shows, concerts, and many more forms of entertainments as listed on the website of Houston Livestock and Rodeo website. One being the Rodeo Art Show, where students are given a chance to enter their artwork to compete in district shows, earn scholarships, and display their artwork in Hayloft Gallery, which many student participants enjoy because they can show their creativity and the meaning behind their work.

Sophomore Thanh Le, said that Rodeo has been extremely fun because he got to be one of the finalists and he got to see the amazing artwork of others in 2017-2018.

“This year my art piece title was ‘Timeless’, the definition of it is not affected by time or change in the fashion. So it describes the cowboy guy chipping the wood and how he was working his way through the day without being affected by the time of it. Since he worked so hard and so long,” Le said.

In addition, the Rodeo Art Show contains diverse mediums of art, that can be in between the gamut of Prismacolors, oil or acrylic paints, watercolor and more.

Junior Lacy Tostado became a finalist this year with her art piece called “Cows Lifestyle” where she used an art medium that was not commonly used to express herself.

“I used paint and pins in it,” Tostado said, “I used this because I wanted to do something different other than pencil and or color pencil. Using paint just brought out color…because art expresses different emotions towards people.”.

Rodeo Art Show is one of few events that showcase art the conveys the day to day life that can be seen in the western heritage and culture. But to some, art is another form of self-identity and individuality.

“Art is my main way of expressing myself because English has always been a hard thing for me to express myself with, so coming to America I used art as a way to communicate what I think and how I feel about society,” Le said.