Boy Wins Cultural Center Poster Contest

A summer night at the Valley Cultural Center’s Concerts in the Park was the inspiration for the fifth annual poster contest’s winning entry, which extolled the virtues of “Friends, Family and Music.”

Mark Christian Ceballos of Oxnard Street Elementary School in North Hollywood submitted the winning poster depicting a five-piece band playing to a cheering crowd under the Warner Park Lou Bredlow Pavilion in Woodland Hills, with fireworks lighting up the sky behind it.

The budding cartoonist also put a bit of humor in his poster, with a mother holding her baby in the front row as her older son sits a seat away listening with stereo headphones, seemingly to something other than the classical and Big Band tunes on stage.

“She wants him to listen to the music, so when he’s listening to the Walkman, she puts a tape of the same music in his Walkman so he has to listen to it,” the fifth-grader explained.

Mark’s poster was chosen from among more than 250 submissions to be featured on the cover of the 1997 Concerts in the Park program this summer.

Dominique Williams of Langdon Avenue Elementary School in North Hills won second place, while two students, Aldo Lucio of Oxnard School and Sierra Lewis of Woodland Hills Elementary School, shared third place for their entries.

Other students receiving honorable mention from the panel of five judges were Robert Ebin and Victoria Elizabeth Leishman, Woodland Hills Elementary; Perla Bunuelos, Jeannette Lopez, Jose Molina and Emir Argueta, also of Oxnard Sreet School; Beatrice Rubio of Tarzana Elementary; Delia Guarneros of Calvert Street Elementary in Woodland Hills; and Daniel Lee of Balboa Magnet School in Northridge.

Mark said his brother, who entered the contest a few years ago, and his teacher at Oxnard encouraged him to submit his work. The 10-year-old said he has been drawing since age 4.

Poster competition chairwoman Lulu Kamatoy said the contest is designed to foster art education and provide a venue for young people with artistic abilities.