Stratford Student Wins National Google Art Contest

STRATFORD, CT — Bunnell sophomore Sarah Harrison has been named the national winner of this year’s Doodle 4 Google competition, Google officials announced on Friday afternoon.

Harrison, who was named winner of the Connecticut competition last month, made her artwork based on the prompt “What I see for the future…” As winner, her doodle will be showcased on the Google homepage from 1 p.m. today through tomorrow morning at 3 a.m.

She will also receive $30,000 toward a college scholarship, an opportunity to work with the Doodle team at the Googleplex in Mountain View, while her school will receive a $50,000 Google for Education grant to advance STEM education.

In her Doodle statement, Harrison said: “My future is a world where we can all learn to love each other despite our religion, gender, race, ethnicity, or sexuality. I dream of a future where everyone is safe and accepted wherever they go, whoever they are.”

“When I started, I was thinking of how there’s a lot of animosity toward diverse communities of people in the world right now,” Harrison said in a press release. “So I wanted to draw something that I hoped would show that we can all get along well, and that it’s possible for us to be happy with each other. I want everyone try to be more open, accepting, and respectful to people. You don’t know what they’ve been through - and they don’t know what you’ve been through - so we all deserve respect from each other.”

The Doodle 4 Google competition gives K-12 students across the country the opportunity to have their artwork featured on the Google homepage.

This year, a panel of judges - including Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles and Grammy winning recording artist Sia - selected the winners from all fifty states and three territories, choosing from over 4,200 entries. Public voting over the course of two weeks then determined five national finalists (one from each age group), before Google announced the winner on Friday.

“This year’s Doodle 4 Google competition was meant to get students thinking about the future they want to create for the world, and their submissions were nothing short of inspiring,” said William Floyd, Head of External Affairs for Google. “Ultimately, Sarah’s doodle captured the best of everything we saw, representing values like diversity, inclusion, and respect in an inspiring and creative image.”

All finalists received a $5,000 college scholarship and a Chromebook, in addition to a trip to Googleplex to meet some professional Doodlers at Google.

To see the winning Doodle submissions from each state and their artists’ explanations, click here.

Contributed photos