Creve Coeur kid wins recycle art contest

Seventh-grader Anna Kulik has been in this country for just six years. But, she's obviously adapted well to life in the U.S. since she's already won a state art contest.

Anna's entry placed first in an environmental greeting card competition sponsored by the Missouri Waste Control Coalition. She won over 660 entries from 20 Missouri schools.

Anna and her twin brother, Vitalyi, and their mother immigrated to St. Louis from the Russian Ukraine in 1998. The twins are students at Parkway Northeast Middle School in Creve Coeur.

Both were among 40 kids sending in entries from Ms. Martha Bunch's art classes at Parkway Northeast Middle.

Anna said her brother wasn't very happy when her entry captured the top spot. He was even less happy when he found that she had won $100 and also earned Ms. Bunch $100 as the teacher from the "winning classroom."

Ms. Bunch said she used the classroom money to buy "art books" for her classes. The books serve as reference material when students want to try different types of art.

The second place winner was Kevin Hunt from Republic (Mo.) Middle School near Springfield, Mo. Third place went to Charlene Maravilla from Partridge Elementary School in Waynesville, in south-central Missouri.

Anna's winning design features kids from around the world putting soda cans and paper into large recycling bins. The scene has a border of clouds.

The 14-year-old said, "The message is that people all over the world should recycle and help each other out."

Asked about her own recycling, she said, "Our family really became interested in recycling after going to the Lake of the Ozarks award presentation." She said her family recycles plastic, metal cans and paper.

But, she was involved last spring in her school's Great Paper Chase recycling contest. Abitibi-Consolidated companies and area media outlets sponsored the area-wide recycling collections.

Parkway Northeast Middle School placed first by increasing its recycled materials by over 600%.

Anna said, "I brought three huge trash bags full of paper from home. We have lots of paper in our house."

She said pollution is a world-wide problem. "You see pictures of trash on beaches and how that affects the animals that live there," she said.

"And, we should recycle paper so we don't have to cut down more trees," she added.

This was the first year that Ms. Bunch's students entered the environmental greeting card contest. But, she's always on the lookout for outside contests her students could enter.

She said, "I like to have the students enter art contests outside of the school and even the city." The outside competitions let kids gauge their efforts against more competitors.

She entered Anna and other students in a Mentor Me competition in 2003. Winners had their entries entered in the Missouri Mosaics Festival of the Arts show in St. Charles. Also, the entries were on display for two weeks at the Missouri History Museum.

Ms. Bunch, Anna and student Elizabeth McCarter had their entries displayed.

Since moving from Russia, Anna said she is mastering the English language and likes school. She said her favorite classes are art, social science and the sciences.

"I have to get the sciences because I want to be an emergency room nurse when I grow up," she said. She said she wants to go to a four-year college to get her nursing degree.

She said most of what she remembers about her native country center around the family's summer home. She said the vacation "dacha" was located on a hill overlooking the water.

Anna admits that she is losing some of her fluency in the Russian language. "Sometimes I have to ask my mother when we are talking to my grandmother in Russia," she said.

The Missouri Waste Control Coalition's Greeting Card Competition started in 1995.

If you or your school might like to enter next year, you can contact the coalition offices at 8826 Santa Fe Drive, Suite 208; Overland Park, Kan. 66212. The phone number is (913) 381-4458.