One person’s trash is another person’s treasure.
Such was the lesson during Monday night’s Trigg County Fiscal Court meeting, as a pair of Wildcats — Jason Knight and Jessara Crenshaw — shared their winning 4-H “Trash Sculpture” creations with magistrates and Judge-Executive Stan Humphries.
Finishing in first place at the school and county levels in the upper elementary division, Knight built the Hogwarts Express from Harry Potter, using a bevy of materials easily at his disposal.
Crenshaw, meanwhile, crafted what she called “The Bloomophone” — in what was her take of a vintage Victrola gramophone.
She fashioned the horn like a flower because “music is like growth,” before gluing a small record on top of the craft.
She took first place in the high school division, first place in the county, first place in the region and best in show, and to put it mildly, Crenshaw is on a wildly-successful creative hot streak.
This artwork is the most recent of her successes, including:
+ A nab of Grand Champion at the Quilt Block Challenge in Paducah, where students from all over the country submitted works made of a specific fabric, and put it on display at the National Quilt Museum;
+ An overall Grand Champion and pair of top-three finishes in modeling and interviewing at the 4-H National Family & Consumer Science National Championship, where during the fashion review she showcased an upcycled stained-glass dress as Kentucky’s only representative, and winner over 17 other states;
+ And selection as Kentucky’s lone representative in the Earth-To-Space Quilt Block Challenge, where this past April at Paducah’s Quilt Week, Crenshaw met retired American mechanical engineer and retired NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg, who created a block based on going back to the Moon and the sustainability of orbit, as well as future expeditions to Mars.
Keeping these themes in mind, Crenshaw was up against students and adults from all 50 states.
Now, she’s one of 50 blocks going into a master quilt that will be displayed at the end of March in Washington D.C.’s Earth-To-Space Festival at the end of March — a trip she’s hoping to make through local fundraising supports.
Shelley Crawford, 4-H Extension Agent, noted that regional “Trash Sculpture” competition was held in Cadiz, with big dividends paid.
The hope for next year, she added, is to get more local students and competitors to step forward with submissions — in order to make the challenge even more rewarding.
