Tucson High senior Caitlin Thomas has been passionate about art for as long as she can remember.
She considers herself a relatively creative person, but never did she think her art would be displayed on a life-size fiberglass cow.
The piece of work is being entered into Safeway's sixth annual Lucerne The Art of Dairy Contest.
Thomas, 18, is one of 30 finalists across the country - only two are from Arizona. She beat out more than 3,000 other students who submitted their designs for consideration.
Up for grabs is a $30,000 grand prize - $20,000 of which will go to the student's school, and $5,000 each for the student and his or her teacher.
The contest was created to help foster creativity in young artists and uses the life-size cows as the focal point to promote dairy products as a healthy snack for kids.
People are also reading…
The theme that had to be incorporated into students' artwork was "sharing joy."
For Thomas, the theme brought to mind sweets. One side of her cow, which she has named Annabelle, displays a cow riding on a wave of milk through a candy land.
The other side has two cows on a date, drinking milk with a downtown skyline as the backdrop and a moon made of cheese hanging overhead.
She worked every day at school for a month, often into the evening, to get Annabelle ready. Thomas said the most challenging part of her project was taking her computer design and putting it onto a 3-D cow.
Thomas learned about the contest through her graphic-design teacher and saw it as an opportunity to not only earn a prize for herself but also for her school.
"It would be great to get more supplies for airbrushing - we're really short on those," Thomas said. "I'm actually surprised we had enough to get through this project."
If named the grand-prize winner, she'd use her portion of the money to attend the Art Institute. She's interested in character design and hopes one day to work for Pixar or a gaming company.
Coincidentally, one of the judges who will be viewing her work is Bill Cone, a Pixar artist who has worked on "Toy Story," "Toy Story 2," "A Bug's Life" and "Cars."
Contact reporter Alexis Huicochea at ahuicochea@azstarnet.com or 573-4175.
