PARIS – Recent high school graduate Lana Wheeler is heading to Kansas City, Mo., in two weeks with her teacher to compete in a national art competition.

Wheeler, who graduated from Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School last weekend, won first place at the statewide Skills USA advertising design competition.

At the national conference, she and her teacher will have four hours to design and plan a logo for the advertising text they will be handed on the spot.

Skills USA is a national career and technical student organization serving a quarter of a million students enrolled in technical training, such as graphic arts programs.

“I’ve always loved to draw and do paintings,” said Wheeler. “In my sophomore year we could take tech classes. I fell in love with it. It was just perfect for me.”

The West Minot resident won a number of awards during her senior year, including “best in show” at the Maine Expo competition this spring that pitted students from technical schools across the state against each other.

Her winning design, a multimedia self-portrait, is her favorite.

“If I hadn’t taken this class, I don’t know what I would have gone to college for,” she said of the graphic arts course she takes through the Oxford Hills Technical High School program. “Other classes I don’t have a passion for.”

Wheeler said that many of her former classmates who went on to college said they are “way ahead” of others in their college art studies because of the graphic design class they took through SAD 17. “It really gives us a boost,” she said.

Wheeler and her classmates from Virginia Valdes’ graphic arts class won in 16 categories at the Maine Expo this spring, toppling the competition.

Besides the Skills USA and Maine Expo awards, Wheeler has won the National Grange T-shirt contest where she represented the West Minot Grange, and the Sebago Lake Music Festival with a poster that will be used for programs and advertising. She also won graphic designer of the year from Oxford Hills Technical High School and a $200 scholarship.

This summer, Wheeler will work at Tripp Lake Camp in Poland. She’ll attend either Central Maine Community College or the University of Southern Maine and major in graphic arts in the fall.

Her dream?

“It would be really cool to own my own business.”