PEA RIDGE — The Pea Ridge Primary/ Intermediate Art Gallery and web site earned a 12th place finish in the Artsonia National Online Gallery competition in final tabulations released recently.

Now a two-time champion in the Arkansas state wide competition, Pea Ridge moved up five notches from its 17th place national finish a year ago.

More than 6,000 American schools and academies have an online presence with the Artsonia corporation, the founder and caretaker of the competition which came into being 10 years ago.

Not just a gallery, the online web site is also a vehicle to encourage and increase parental knowledge and support of each student’s efforts in the fine arts in Pea Ridge.

Nearly 2,000 people weresigned up last year as official fans of the students work and more than 110,000 people logged on to view the gallery during the last school year.

Schools were awarded points for the amount created, the number of fans generated, and the number of comments and statements left by fans and artists alike. In all those categories, Pea Ridge was the leader statewide to earn state championship awards in a clean sweep.

Pea Ridge posted more than 20,000 artworks last year, enough to lead the nation for a second year in that category. In the number of fans generated, Pea Ridge ranked 11th inthe nation, and had a top 10 finish in the number of comments posted by the public. In the area of artist statements, the local artists finished seventh in thecountry. In overall school leadership, Pea Ridge was listed as the 12th best school in the U.S.

“This year I am really hoping for a top 10 national overall finish,” John McGee, art teacher, said.

“We came close last year.

Just a couple of years ago we were hoping to make it into the top 100 schools so you can see that we have adjusted our sights upward.”

“This is a ranking that is really dependent of students friends and family,” McGee said, “so the more folks get online and view the kids’ art and make a comment or two about their favorite student, the more it will encourage that student as well asboost our rankings.”

“The bottom line in all of this is that participating in Artsonia has given quite a huge boost to our kids’ quality of art andpride in their work. We have won quite a few awards individually in a number of competitions the past few years and Artsonia is a big reason for that. I get frequent comments from parents and relatives on their appreciation of being able to see their kids’ art online and how it has become a source of pride for all concerned.”

The Pea Ridge gallery is located at www.artsonia.

com/pearidge2. There are archives available that will show the work of Pea Ridge artists over the past three years. The Artsonia web site will hold student artwork for viewing indefinitely so that those that attend PeaRidge elementary schools may grow up and be able to refer back to what they were doing artistically as elementary-school students.

School, Pages 16 on 08/24/2011