By Angela Green, BGSU intern
Hannah Davis of Bluffton, loves to help her mother, Jane, bake, and this love of baking helped the four-year-old win a national art contest.
The family found out Hannah won $500 when she won the Voter's Choice Award in her age group in the "Henkel Helps Create" Kids Art Contest, open to children from 2 to 18 years old. The theme of the contest was for artists to create an art piece that shows how they can improve themselves, their school or their town.
"We love to cook and bake and share with other people," said Jane, "and I thought we might as well try it."
Hannah colored a picture of herself as a chef wearing a large white chef's hat in front of a plate of chocolate chip cookies and holding more cookies up in each hand. There is a vertical row of red hearts on either side of her. The caption she wrote for the picture is "Love, hugs, smiles, and friendship are just a few nice things that happen when I surprise people with some homemade cookies that I help make."
The chef is even wearing a purple necklace.
"Wearing necklaces is her trademark so I thought it was neat that she drew the chef wearing a necklace too," said Jane.
The picture took Hannah about 20 minutes to complete right before the deadline.
"Once she sites down, she's pretty dedicated," said Jane.
Hannah said she also likes to draw animals and people and likes to do seasonal crafts, such as cutting out snowflakes and making a winter wonderland on a piece of blue construction paper.
On Sept. 22, the Davis family was notified that Hannah's artwork had been chosen as one of the 25 finalists in her age group, ages 2 to 5, and would be put on the Henkel Helps website for the public to vote on. The artwork with the most votes by noon on September 30 would get a $500 prize.
So Hannah put her art skills to work again and helped make fliers to pass out to her family and friends, asking them to vote for her artwork. She found out through the website that people in other states and even Germany were voting for her.
Then on Oct. 8, Hannah learned she had won the Voter's Choice Award for her age group with 2,616 votes. She used the part of her $500 prize to buy a new art station that holds her new art supplies including paint brushes, paint, markers, crayons, stencils, paper and much more.
Even though Hannah loves creating artwork, she said she wants to be a doctor or a dentist when she grows up so she can wear a mask.
