Students in grades 4-12 are invited to participate in the Student Mars Art (SMArt) Contest, which is being sponsored by the Mars Society. Students may enter up to three pieces of artwork that depicts any part of the human future on the Red Planet, including the first landing, human field exploration, operations at an early Mars base, the building of the first Martian cities, terraforming the Red Planet and other related human settlement concepts.

Students may use a wide variety of media to create their art, including but not limited toencil, charcoal, watercolors or paint, or using digital art software such as Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Corel Painter Essentials or free options like Blender or GIMP. Artwork should be saved as a PDF or JPEG file and can be submitted via the Mars Society’s submission form for this contest. Submissions are due by May 31, 2017, at 5:00 PM MST.

The three categories are divided up by grade level: Upper Elementary (4-6), Junior High (7-9) and High School (10-12). Entries in each category are eligible to win cash prizes that include $1,000 for first place, $500 for second place and $250 for third place, as well as trophies for each prize. Certificates of honorable mention will be awarded to artwork in each category that did not win a prize, but are judged to be outstanding.

The winning works of art will be posted on the Mars Society web site and may also be published as part of a special book about Mars art. In addition, winners will be invited to come to the 20th Annual International Mars Society Convention at the University of California, Irvine September 7-10, 2017 to display and talk about their art.

Speaking about the SMArt Contest, Mars Society President Dr. Robert Zubrin said, “The imagination of youth looks to the future. By holding the SMArt Contest, we are inviting young people from all over the world to use art to make visible the things they can see with their minds that the rest of us have yet to see with our own eyes. Show us the future, kids. From imagination comes reality. If we can see it, we can make it.”

Any questions about the contest can be emailed to the Mars Society at Marsart@marssociety.org.

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