City of Ames Water and Pollution Control Public Art Contest & Exhibition - March 2025

The City of Ames' Water & Pollution Control Department held their annual Public Art Contest & Exhibition this year. I'd never been eligible to compete before, as I've been on a city commission since it first started, but this was my first time being eligible. (I recently opted not to renew my term as I'm on school board and it's a big amount of time/focus.)

In the past, the contest has been open to all Ames citizens to enter photography. For the first time this year, they allowed in other sorts of 2D art, as well. All art has to do with water in some form.

I was lucky to be selected as one of the finalists. We had to bring a framed copy of our art piece to the water treatment plant, where it hung:

This was not a small photo, so framing and matting was sort of a pain in the butt.

Here is a link to the other entries via their Instagram post: LINK

There were three titles:

• Best In Show

• People's Choice

  • This means that people who physically went to the water plant voted for you most

• Most Likable

  • This sounds suspiciously like People's Choice, but it means that it got the most likes on Instagram

I admittedly was in a little bit of a disadvantage - my piece was a photo, and it wasn't representing our town specifically. So I was not ever expecting Best In Show, or really any of them. And I couldn't even get my family out to the Water Treatment Plant, so I was certainly not expecting People's Choice - if other contestants got their friends and families out there, I really doubt that their families were going to spontaneously vote for me.

It was nice to win Most Likable, however. It had a small cash stipend, which I'm awaiting in the mail. And it was just overall nice. Now I have to figure out what to do with a giant pelican framed photo.

I let my website builder's AI edit the last names out, my directions were "remove text and match the green background" - I guess it did half of that.