AirTrain Poster Contest winners

The artwork produced by Queens middle school students currently displayed inside AirTrains heading to and from JFK International Airport will be seen by as many people as pieces of art hanging in the Met.
“Your artwork is going to be seen by millions,” Bill DeCota, Director of Aviation for the Port Authority, told the children, winners of the AirTrain JFK Poster Contest, on Monday, May 14.
DeCota said that in the first four months of 2007, about 1.3 million people had taken a ride on the AirTrain, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art averages five million visitors per year.
“Looking at this work, it’s easy to see why people want to visit this city and why they want to stay,” said Port Authority Executive Director Anthony Shorris.
More than 500 children from four schools - P.S. 178 in Jamaica Estates, M.S. 158 in Bayside, M.S. 210 in Ozone Park, and P.S. 134 in Hollis - competed in the poster contest to draw “What I like about New York,” but only seven were picked as grand-prize winners.
The top prize was $50 given to the students from the Aviation Development Council for art supplies and $200 for their teachers to buy supplies for the class. In addition, winners received passes to the New York Aquarium, and their work will be on display through October.
Four of the seven winners came from M.S. 158 in Bayside.
“They did a fantastic job,” said their art teacher Mario Asaro, explaining that the class pretended to be a graphic firm supplying art for a client. “We had them create a client-artist relationship.”
In the past, the school has worked with the West Side Cultural Center, which holds the annual Ecofest in Lincoln Center.
Asaro said that the artwork of seventh grader Emily Chow has appeared in the Ecofest promotions and won in the AirTrain JFK poster contest. Chow’s M.S. 158 schoolmates - eighth grader Sol Lee, seventh grader Willie Pan, and sixth grader Catherine Yang - were also selected.
Bayside resident Yang drew “all of the things that I love in my neighborhood.” She said that she included the Statue of Liberty into her “I love NY” motif because of its iconic status around the world.
“Immigrants come here; that’s the first thing they see,” said Yang, explaining that her own parents passed through Ellis Island after emigrating from China.
P.S. 134 fifth grader Cierra Cherry drew the city skyline, and Mary Anne Ines, a sixth grader at M.S. 210, drew depictions of the four seasons.
P.S. 178 fifth grader Anjila Boadnaraine instead focused on another attraction in New York - the Bronx Zoo. An animal lover, Boadnaraine painted a leopard, welcoming visitors.
“I drew a regular drawing, and then my art teacher [Marisa Guglatta] gave me the idea of putting it into the contest,” Boadnaraine said.
For the contest ceremony, Boadnaraine’s mother, Sheromanie, allowed her daughter to take a half-day off from school. Both mother and daughter got the chance to take a ride on the AirTrain with the other winners and their proud families after the ceremony. “I got a half day, too,” Guglatta joked.