Art students at Old Rochester Regional High School are hoping they’re a shoe in for the Vans Custom Culture contest. In this contest, each school that enters is sent four pairs of blank, white Vans sneakers with the challenge to decorate them in a way that reflects their local culture. This is ORR’s fourth year participating in the contest.

The art department at Old Rochester Regional High School has long been critically acclaimed for its involvement and success in local and national high school art contests. Recently, students in the Art Major I, Honors Art Major II and Honors Portfolio Art classes have been working on entries for the national Vans Custom Culture contest.

Frederick Miller, Maddie Morris and Dianara Underhill were inspired by David Bowie.

“I began with the conception of multiple themes from the works of Bowie. We decided we would take elements from multiple albums and compile them into one iconographic shoe design, which would feature his ‘Spiders From Mars,’ the ‘Aladdin Sane’ bolt, and ‘Ziggy Stardust,’” said senior Frederick Miller, describing his group’s shoes.

“I’m not as well versed in David Bowie as my group members, so I helped filter ideas and acted as a sort of aesthetics manager,” said Maddie Morris, a junior.

“Maddie acted as an outside perspective,” Miller said. “She really helped us gauge how others would view and perceive the shoe.”

As far as appraising goes, the continental United States is divided into five regions for the first round of judging. From each region, 10 finalists are selected by a panel of judges. The second round of judging is done through a public vote. From those 50 entries, the top five finalists are flown to Los Angeles for a four day long event to celebrate the importance of art education as well as the students’ achievements. The grand prize winning high school is awarded a $50,000 donation to its art education program.

“We’ve come close to qualifying in past submissions,” said Joanne Mogilnicki, ORR’s art teacher. “In terms of quality, craftsmanship and content, the entries of the qualifying finalists in our region were very similar to ours. We’ll see what happens this year.”

Student artists have spent the better part of two weeks working on their submissions within their groups.

“I think the group dynamic is probably the most challenging and wonderful thing that comes out of this experience,” Mogilnicki said. “Where there’s a confluence of ideas, students have to learn to negotiate and compromise and pull their egos and emotions out of the equation when deciding what is best for the group and the expression of the idea as well as the clarity of expression.”

Seniors Bailey Sweet and Jewlya Sturtevant along with junior Emma Cadieux worked together on a New Bedford-themed shoe, inspired by the historic fishing industry.

“Our topic was ‘local flavor’ so we thought of a lagota (a half-scale boat model) from the Whaling Museum,” said Sweet.

“As a group, we wrote down a whole bunch of things we wanted to include in our design and then narrowed it down a little bit to what we wanted to keep and what was leaving,” explained Cadieux. “It was just kind of this one big Modge Podge mess at first, but it actually ended up looking very good.”

Sweet said the project took the group around 20 hours to complete.

Emil Assing, Will Santos, Brett Noone and Avery Jordan submitted a shoe that represents skating culture while the fourth pair is a Van Gogh inspired pair designed by Aubrey Isabelle, Emily Faulkner and Sadie Weedall.

Vans is connected with www.truth.com, an organization that works to eliminate teen smoking. Through the contest, truth.com send students and educators free merchandise and information on how to prevent smoking in teens. A portion of the entry fees paid by schools are passed on to truth.com, a nonprofit organization.

“There is an aspect of commercialism to it,” said Mogilnicki, “but ultimately, it’s worth it. Everything this contest stands for is for a good cause.”

The students will find out if they’ve advanced to the next round by April 15.