District students, teacher win art awards at Minnesota State Fair

Birch Grove School for the Arts’ visual arts teacher, Kori Brown, enjoys submitting her artwork into the annual Minnesota State Fair fine arts competition, and she encourages her students to submit work as well. 

“At the end of the year, I approached students who I see excelling in one way of making art,” Brown said. “I wanted to acknowledge that by asking them about making something to enter into the state fair.” 

This year, three Birch Grove artists, both teacher and students, walked away with a trifecta: a first, second and third place finish for different artistic endeavors. 

Emmanuel Jenkins, who has moved up to Brooklyn Middle STEAM School as a sixth-grader since submitting his pipe cleaner art, placed second in the fifth grade: sculpture category. Brown said Jenkins began making pipe cleaner art a couple of years ago, and he found enjoyment in working through his creations independently rather than finding online tutorials. His artistic creations quickly caught on with other Birch Grove students.

“He created a legacy of pipe cleaner artists here at Birch Grove,” she said. “He’s quite inspiring to many students.”

“When I first tried pipe cleaner art, I kept trying it more and more and more until I thought - ‘I love this stuff!’” Jenkins said. “So, I’m going to keep doing it.”

“That’s how my legacy came,” he added with a laugh.

Birch Grove fifth grade student, Jaxon Leon, placed third for his graffiti art in the fourth grade drawing: marker category. Leon said he was inspired to create graffiti art because of his older brother, who he said has 12 books full of his drawings, and a cousin who has painted murals all over Minneapolis and runs an art camp. 

“The advice I’d want to give people who want to do graffiti art is to keep practicing, and you can achieve your goals,” Leon said. “It was kind of hard for me in the beginning, but I kept trying and trying until I got it.”

As for Brown, she struck gold with her crop art piece that celebrated the 40th anniversary of one of her favorite movies, “The Labyrinth,” taking first place in the Special Occasions crop art category. Brown has been teaching art at Birch Grove for 17 years now, which is also where she attended elementary school herself as a child. 

Brown’s blue ribbon-winning artwork was also recently featured by CCX Media. 

Brown said she spent 140 hours this summer on her creation, which used many different types of seeds and other materials like onion skin and corn silk to bring her celebration of “The Labyrinth” to life in crop form. 

“It was a major goal of mine to win a blue ribbon at the state fair in seed art, because it’s such a popular thing,” Brown told CCX. “So, goal accomplished!”

All three artists are already planning to submit more art for the 2027 Minnesota State Fair.