Cheyenne artist's egg wins state competition

The Wyoming Arts Council sponsored a contest to select the Wyoming egg for the National Egg Board's White House event. An artistic egg by a Cheyenne resident won the competition. The 33 artistic eggs submitted for the 2009 competition are now on display at the WAC in downtown Cheyenne. Legislators voted on their selections during the recent session. We'll have those results in April.

Today's Wyoming Tribune-Eagle had a feature on the 2008 winner. Here are some excerpts:

Jules Webb, a Cheyenne egg artist, won the state's competition and traveled to Washington, D.C. this past weekend for a little schmoozing with the first lady and other egg artists from around the country.

Last year, the egg that was chosen to represent Wyoming was actually decorated by someone from Illinois. "It was really sad," Webb said of the injustice, adding that last year's egg art was painfully lacking in, well, artistry.

So this year, Wyoming egg artists wouldn't let themselves be overshadowed again. The Wyoming Arts Council put out a call for entries and required that the artists be Wyoming residents.

The first lady of Wyoming, Nancy Freudenthal, chose the winning egg, which was decorated with a Wyoming theme: earth tones, mountains, fish, deer and the sun, Webb said.

"I was surprised," Webb said of the moment she learned she had won. She has been decorating eggs for 35 years, she said, and never knew there was a contest.