Barren County Middle 8th grader Marley Redford wins “I Love My County” art contest

GLASGOW, Ky. – At Barren County Middle School, an eighth grader decided to enter the “I Love My County” art contest from the Kentucky Association of Counties.

“When I entered, I really didn’t expect anything. When I got the phone call, I was so surprised with how it turned out. It was kind of just something that I just entered because it was something that our teacher thought would be really cool,” Marley Redford, Barren County Middle eighth grader says.

Her art teacher actually heard about the contest from a local official.

“I found out about the contest through our Central Office staff who learned about it from our judge executive Jamie Bewley Byrd. She and I always try to promote our county and send it out to some of our administrators at the district level, and they sent it to the art teachers in the district. I thought it was a really good opportunity to showcase my students work,” Sarah Vetter, the art teacher at Barren County Middle says.

In the classroom, Ms. Vetter sees Marley’s passion for art, and is a huge supporter of her work.

“She is just so self-motivated. I got to work with her in seventh grade for a little while, and then this year she’s in my all year art class. When she finishes a project that we do in class, she just jumps immediately into making her own art, I can tell it’s something that she’s passionate about and she’d like to do in her free time, too,” she says.

But why exactly did Marley choose the Barren County Courthouse as her inspiration for the drawing?

“I wanted to do something that the whole county would know what it was. If I did a chicken coop or a family farm, that’s great… but probably everybody wouldn’t really understand what that was. So I thought I’d do something that was really big for the community such as the Courthouse,” she says.