When thinking of The State Fair of Texas, images of fun rides and games and unusual fast food come to mind. However, most do not know that the fair holds a creative arts competition for amateur artists in the child, junior, and adult categories. This year, senior Sophia Foster won second place in the sculpture category and received an honorable mention in the watercolor category in the competition. 

Foster has entered the past two years, receiving a first place and honorable mention.

“Honestly, I was a little bit disappointed, but then I looked into it and they had [a] record breaking amount of people enter,” Foster said. “They had 8200 people enter, which is like three times more than they’ve had enter in the past few years. Then I was like ‘you know what, it’s not as good as I’ve done in the past but I’m really glad that I did this well, because I had so much competition this year.’”

Foster’s art teacher, Amanda Beller, was not surprised at her placement, and describes her as an “extremely driven” student. 

“She is very driven to really be, to push herself to create work that is super accurate when it comes to depictions of things,” Beller said. “But [she is] also, technically excellent so she really works on using materials effectively. 

Foster’s used dinosaurs as her muse for the sculpture competition, specifically the stegosaurus. 

“It [the stegosaurus] was a part of my concentration last year,” Foster said. “A concentration is where you focus on one medium or one subject and you do a bunch of pieces based on that one thing. I did a bunch of dinosaurs.”  

Foster’s other piece was a “cute” idea that ended up representing something more. 

“My watercolor piece is a police dog with the Dallas Police badge behind it,” Foster said. “Honestly, for that one my goal was that I wanted to paint a dog that was wearing clothes. I thought that what I found was very cute, and then I was like, this is relevant too, because there’s a lot of issues with police and stuff in the country.”

Foster has done sculpture in the past, including taking classes at school. She was unable to take a sculpture class this year due to schedule conflicts. 

  “I’d never really done sculpture in competition, and so that was a new experience,” Foster said. “I’ve only ever done the visual arts. It was just an experience because I’d never entered sculptures or anything so it was interesting.”

Contestants spent the summer working on their pieces and submitted them over a three day window. The results were announced mid-August.

“You can actually drive through the fair grounds because they are just public streets,” Foster said. “You drive into the fair and to the creative arts building, which is mind boggling because in a few weeks from [then], thousands of people will be walking around just a bunch of fair stuff.”