Loup City teen looks to future as artist

Marissa Eurek and her mom, Patty, both know exactly when they realized she was going to be an artist.

It was at parent-teacher conferences in kindergarten. The teacher showed Patty her daughter's picture of a circus train going through a town, complete with animals riding in back and a high-rise building in the background.

"The teacher was kind of impressed, because the other kids were doing stick people," Patty Eurek said.

"My mom was like, ’Oh my God, she's going to be an artist,'" Marissa said.

Twelve years later, Marissa is starting to lay claim to that label.

Oh, she's been drawing and painting for a while now. And other people have been noticing, especially in the past few years.

She's won a slew of high school art show awards. Last year, she received a Nebraska Young Artist Award from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. And just a few weeks ago, she won second place in a national editorial cartoon contest through the National Federation of Press Women.

Art's always been something Eurek's done for fun. But now, as she heads to school at the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago in August, art is becoming major for Marissa.

"If people would ask me, ’Are you an artist?' I'd say, ’No, I just like to draw,'" she said. "But I think I'm going to be an artist someday."

What's brought the most attention this year, her senior year, are her editorial cartoons, which ran every other week in the local newspaper during the school year.

She began cartooning this year as an alternative to the writing assignments for the local paper in her journalism class. She threw herself into the project, researching the work of famous editorial cartoonists to help develop her own style.

Her cartoons took on a wide variety of local and state topics, from Husker football to underage drinking.

And she's not afraid to ruffle a few feathers.

In one cartoon, U.S. Senate candidate and former U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns is shown quite literally stabbing a farmer in the back -- a reference to the closing of Farm Service Agency offices -- while yelling, "Hey! Vote Johanns for Senate!"

"People keep telling me I'm going to get attacked by Johanns," Eurek said. "But everybody's favorite one is the Johanns one."

And Marissa's favorite cartoon, one satirizing underage drinking, was turned down by the local paper. (She drew one on global warming instead.)

In the small town of Loup City, Eurek's known as the artist. She said everyone in town has been supportive of her interests, whether they're commenting on her cartoons or buying her caricatures at town festivals.

That's not all she's good at, though. She also plays guitar and has excelled in speech and drama. She graduated last month as the valedictorian of her class.

She's done well at virtually everything she's tried, said her mom, Patty.

Still, her artistic talent continues to take her family aback.

"It's pretty much a God-given talent," Patty said. "As a parent, you go, ’Which side of the family did this come from?'"

By all accounts, Eurek fits the free-spirited, artsy, indie-music mold -- which might be a little out of the ordinary in Loup City, but should make her relatively vanilla compared with the characters at art school in Chicago.

In fact, after standing out in a small town for her singular talent, she should find a way to stand out, even when she's a little fish in the proverbial big pond.

"My thing that's going to make me different is that I'm the only normal person there," she said.