Budding graphic artists from all over are playing “catch up” with a Flushing fifth grader, now that Melissa Rueda of P.S. 20, The Bowne School, has won a national package design contest sponsored by food giant H.J. Heinz Company.
The “Heinz Ketchup Creativity Contest” challenged school kids from first grade through high school to come up with graphic designs for “single serving” packs of their product.
Rueda is one of the 12 national champions, who made it past 45,000 entrants to a class of 36 finalists, as judged by artist Burton Morris, whose work became famous when his art was used on the set of the hit-TV sitcom “Friends.”
The winner from three finalist designs for each grade was selected by popular vote on the contest’s Internet web site www.ketchupcreativity.com
As fifth grade champ, Melissa wins a $1,000 prize and will have her artwork appear on nearly 20 million of the ubiquitous packets, as will the other winners.
Her winning product art shows a smiling bottle of the name-brand ketchup, being held aloft by a crowd of happy French fries.
The school, at 142-30 Barclay Avenue in downtown Flushing, wins $1,000 worth of art supplies, a windfall for Melissa’s fellow artists and art teacher Phyliss Grodofsky.
“We’re all very excited,” she said, explaining how “everyone in the school” contacted friends and family all over the country and as far away as Colombia and Israel, to vote for Melissa.
Principal Victoria Hart couldn’t be more pleased, saying the whole school “is ecstatic over Melissa’s tremendous achievement. She is an amazing artist, and we are so proud of her.”
The third part of the prize could be even more popular than the art supplies among the kids – $1,000 worth of Heinz Ketchup.
Hart confirmed a widespread belief that “the kids love Heinz ketchup.” But what do you do with $1,000 worth of the stuff?
“We’re not really sure how much room $1,000 worth of ketchup actually is,” she confessed.
“But we’ll think of something.”
