News Photo by Crystal Nelson Deb Hautau, Alpena Community College instructor and Girl Scout Troop 1218 co-leader, on Thursday looks through some artwork in her Alpena Community College classroom that could be selected for a mural for the Alpena County Sheriff’s Office Animal Control building.

ALPENA — An art contest to determine what a mural for the Alpena County Sheriff’s Office Animal Control building will look like is underway.

Girl Scout Ambassadors in Troop 1218 are accepting artwork from K-12 students that will be used to design murals for three of the animal control building’s walls.

Ambassadors are Girl Scouts who are in the 11th and 12th grades.

The project is tied to a journey the girl scouts are working to complete, which requires them to examine their own dreams and then help make somebody’s dream come true, Deb Hautau, troop co-leader, said.

Hautau said the troop has connections at animal control, and decided they wanted to make Alpena County Animal Control Officer Michelle Reid’s dream come true.

Reid was not immediately available for comment.

Hautau said Reid had a two-part dream. Reid’s first dream was to have painted rocks to go outside the animal control building’s doors and the second was that she wanted help painting the building.

“So the girls were like, why don’t we take it a step further, and do it as a mural,” Hautau said.

Hautau said she showed her troop photos from a similar mural project her daughter participated in while in elementary school for MidMichigan Medical Center-Alpena’s cancer ward. She said the girl scouts thought they could do something similar.

Hautau said the troop received permission from the Alpena County Board of Commissioners to move forward with the project.

“It’s open to K-12 for students to submit artwork and then we will go through the art and try to incorporate as many as possible to make murals all around the building,” she said. “Ideally, we want to have all grade levels represented.”

The Girl Scouts will help Reid, the animal control officer, select artwork for the mural. Hautau said they have also invited county commissioners to participate in selecting the art work, as the board of commissioners will have to approve the mural.

Once artwork for the mural has been selected, all of the students who submitted artwork for the contest will be invited to paint the mural this summer.

Artwork can be submitted to a students school office, emailed to hautaudj@alpenacc.edu, or mailed to the attention of Deb Hautau at Alpena Community College, 665 Johnson St. in Alpena. The deadline to submit artwork is Feb. 26.