Mean Green tartan contest winner announced
Ateanna Uriri // Contributing Writer
After almost two weeks of voting, the winner of UNT’s Tartan design contest is metalsmithing and fibers senior Casey Heidt, who designed tartan A. Heidt explained she experimented with proportions and using green, white and black together in harmony to create a design that represents two maps – one of the campus with the Hurley Administration Building in the center and the other of the city of Denton with the downtown square in the center.
Heidt’s design garnered a total of 164,011 votes during the voting period, more than three times the number of students and registered faculty at the university.
The total vote count was 410,328 from 5,391 individual voters, said Nancy Kolsti, news promotions specialist for UNT University Relations, Communications and Marketing.
Heidt was still surprised that she had won the contest. “I don’t think it has hit yet,” she said an hour after Wednesday’s ceremony.
The contest began as a way to commemorate UNT’s 125th anniversary in 2015. Heidt’s design will be sent to the Scottish Register of Tartans in Edinburgh to be entered in the registry and used on UNT merchandise, according to the tartan project website.
Registering the tartan on the site will be “a lasting contribution to UNT’s 125th anniversary celebration and create a new and enduring tradition through apparel and products,” said Jerry Holbert, president of the UNT Foundation.
A formal ceremony will take place once Heidt’s design has been entered into the registry. UNT President Neal Smatresk will show off the official certificate and design rights, which he feels would be a fun thing for students and the university to refer to, especially anyone from the university with Scottish or Irish ancestry.
“I think we should all wear the tartan for St. Paddy’s Day next year. I think we ought to own St. Paddy’s Day,” he said.
Students in Lesli Robertson’s advanced weaving class had the chance to learn about the history of Scottish tartans and the clans that they represented and bring a little Scottish pride to UNT by creating their own tartan.
“When the project was first introduced, I was really excited because being in this department has given me way more opportunities than any other art department that I’ve been in,” said Alyssa Russell, a finalist in the contest. “So, just the idea that we could make something and we had the chance of ‘Hey, this going to be an official UNT thing,’ is so exciting.”
Robertson’s 17 students created 41 tartans, with some students creating as many as 20 designs on their own.
“This was a great project to have the students participate in,” Robertson said. “The collaboration between so many departments, staff, and elements of UNT really made this a meaningful and rich experience for the students.”
The students presented their tartan design to a group of judges that included Robert Milnes, dean of the College of Visual Arts and Design. Three finalists were chosen for the online contest.
Grethe Wirth, a senior drawing and painting and art history double major who created tartan B, came in second with 87,099 votes and Alyssa Russell, a junior fibers major who created tartan C, came in third with 10,025 votes.
Dean Milnes presented Heidt with a check from the UNT Foundation for $500 during a casual ceremony in Robertson’s fibers class. Russell and Wirth received checks for $200 and their classmates received gift cards for their participation.
I know this is years late and I don’t even know how I got there, I just opened a bunch of stuff “open in a new tab” and as I was going through them, this was one of them. BUT it’s not St. Patty’s Day, It’s St. Paddy’s Day. Patty is short for Patricia, Paddy is short for Patrick because Patrick is originally Padrig. UNT President Neal Smatresk just turned gave the holiday a sex change. I hope someone from the paper tells him so he can learn and be correct going forward.