Prize-winning Culver City Middle School eighth-grader Erin Marble says her interest in drawing was ignited by her big sister, Addy, a sophomore at Culver City High School.
“The art she was doing (through the Academy of Visual and Performing Arts program) was really cool,” Erin said.
“She was doing colored pencils. It looked like fun. She was so good at it.”
So is Erin.
She was declared an Honorable Mention winner this week in the West Basin Municipal Water District’s “Water Is Life” contest, accenting water conservation.
Once her attention in drawing was sparked, Erin Marble made a commitment to learn the discipline.
She took an art class at the Middle School that, Erin says, encompassed “a broad spectrum of art. We did finger painting and we did squiggle drawings.”
As readers can see from the accompanying photos, the Marble family, all four of them, love the great outdoors.
The West Basin contest’s water conservation theme fits in compactly with the Marbles’ interests.
Big sister Addy encouraged Erin to enter the contest. Turned out to be sterling advice. She gave just the right nudge. With a self-effacing smile, Erin admits that “Addy had to talk me into it.” Erin became convinced when Addy told her she could win an iPad – and she did.
This is not an Erin first. Last year when she earned Honorable Mention, she also landed an iPad.
Erin says she practices water conservation at home by taking shorter showers. And she would while doing dishes, too, and here came another wide smile, if she did dishes, which she is kind of supposed to do. “Sometimes we like to walk away,” she says, without cleaning the dishes.
It is a little early to talk about career plans. “I don’t really know,” says Erin. “My mom (Nicky) is an architect. That seems kind of cool. But I don’t really want to be what she is.”
Why? “Because she is doing it,” and Erin wants to tread a career path that is original.
Erin’s father Dan is an electrician. As a Marble, though, he, too, is artistically inclined. He paints, and that makes it unanimous for an artistic family that added one more jewel this week with Erin’s prize.
