Powder River Examiner -

Courtesy Artsonia

Powder River County District High School student Rachel Rasmussen is the proud winner of Artsonia's Artist of the Week contest, a voting competition held on Artsonia.com, the world's largest collection of student art portfolios exhibiting over 80 million pieces of student art.

Rasmussen received more than a thousand online votes for her winning art.

When asked how she felt when she found out she won Artist of the Week, Rasmussen said, "I was excited."

Rasmussen's teacher, Connie Barnhart is a passionate educator who has been teaching art for more than forty years.

"I love to nurture creativity in my students," Barnhart said. "It is very exciting to see kids and adults discover and express their own unique view of the world and their inner beings."

Barnhart is one of the thousands of art teachers from over 100 countries around the world who use Artsonia to showcase their student art, crowdsource lesson plans and help fundraise for their classrooms. Artsonia lets family and friends of student artists create and purchase organic keepsakes from the student art, and then gives back 20 percent of all revenue to the local art classroom.

Artsonia developed Artist of the Week ten years ago as a way to encourage teachers to submit student artwork and engage the school and community to vote on and recognize students for their achievements. Every week, Artsonia selects 12 random submissions in each of four different age groups (PreK-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-12) from artwork submitted the previous week. Voting is then open to the public for several days before the winner is announced.

Blick Art Materials generously donates a $100 gift certificate to the winning school and an individual $50 gift certificate to the student artist.

For more information, visit artsonia.com.