North Barrington 5th grader in national art competition

An art project made by a fifth-grader from North Barrington Elementary school named Mya Hardin has been entered in a national competition against 11 other fourth, fifth and sixth graders from across the country.

If Mya's clay teapot gets enough votes, she could win a plaque and two art supply gift certificates for art supplies, $50 for her and $100 for her class.

Alex Siddons, The North Barrington Elementary art teacher, said Mya's clay teapot is a culmination of nine weeks of work that her fifth-grade students did which included learning about the history of teapots, sketching out their own, forming their design with clay and painting it when it was out of the kiln.

"Mya had an idea of a wavy shape," Siddons said. "That was one of the challenges she had to overcome and she did a great job."

The Artist of the Week contest is run by artsonia.com, a Gurnee-based company that curates a database from pictures of student's art sent in by their teachers.

Lisa Pope, an artsonia.com employee, said Mya's piece was chosen randomly from the arount 130,000 images the company gets per week. Voting ends Saturday night and the winner will be announced Sunday.