Senior Lyza Stevens took the Sierra High best of show art honors Thursday night with a charcoal and pastel art work entitled “Conceptual Drowning”.
 The painting features a young woman on a pier at a mountain lake where she is chained to a large clock with crashing waves.  Stevens won $35 for her entry. She worked on the art piece for some 20 hours at home.
She won first, second and third places in an October art show at the Manteca Senior Center.  Her first place was an entry showing her Belgian Shepherd.  Her dad Bryan Stevens is an art teacher at East Union High School who worked with his daughter in her younger years in her art but she developed her own style since becoming a teenager. 
Stevens has never received a grade other than an “A” in her classes and has never missed a day of school, according to her mother.  Stevens is also a member of the Sierra High swim team and is featured in the 500-meter free style events.
One of her paintings delved into ancient history with two human arms reaching out of the sea with water splashing from between the fingers and in the palm of one hand an old wreck of a ship and in the other what appeared to be a Greek temple – the discovery of a lost city at the bottom of the sea.
In her younger years at Brock Elliott Elementary School she enjoyed sketching women’s fashion lines but graduated into fine art in high school such as the intricately painted peacock that was mounted on the north wall of the cafeteria with nearly 100 entries from other art students.
Stevens also entered her black and white photography with some accented with green water colors on leaves in the photographs.  She is an AP art student at Sierra.
Sierra Music Director Richard Hammerstrom set up risers in the cafeteria for his select choir members to entertain guests. After the end of the singing, a group of Sierra students gathered around a piano on the other side of the cafeteria and entertained themselves with piano medleys and song.

To contact Glenn Kahl, email gkahl@mantecabulletin.com.