Thirteen of the 22 winning students from the 2011 Cooperative Calendar of Student Art attended a special recognition reception at the Indiana State Museum in Indianapolis, Sept. 30. The event was the first in the new partnership between Electric Consumer, which produces the calendar each year for some 20-participating electric cooperatives, and the Hoosier Salon, the distinguished organization of Indiana artists and art patrons.

Donnae Dole, executive director of the Hoosier Salon, spoke about each student’s work, and presented each with a bound volume of the Salon’s 86-year history. She told the young artists that they, too, have the talent to some day be part of the Hoosier Salon’s juried exhibition, the latest of which was also on display.

The 22 winning calendar works were on display at the museum during the evening reception before beginning a tour of the Salon’s art galleries in Wabash, New Harmony and Indianapolis. The Great Frame Up donated the professional framing of each piece.

At the reception, Dole announced that the partnership with Indiana’s electric cooperatives and the calendar artists is the beginning of its “Junior Hoosier Salon” program it plans to develop further in the coming years. The partnership between Hoosier Salon and Electric Consumer’s long-standing calendar art contest will raise the awareness, recognition and prestige of the contest within the arts community around the state and increase the Salon’s reach into rural Indiana and its awareness among younger artists.

Donnae Dole, executive director of the Hoosier Salon, congratulates third grader Grace Overdorf at a reception for the 2011 Cooperative Calendar of Student Art winners at the Indiana State Museum, Sept. 30.

Amanda Whaling, the 10th grade winner, looks over the framed art on display.