Brooklyn woman wins trip to New York with a drawing

Brooklyn resident Carol Wittwer was listening to local radio station KNRK when she heard about an art cover contest for a “limited-edition single” sleeve. Liam Gallagher (formerly of “Oasis”) and John Squire (formerly of “Stone Rose”) were the recording artists looking for an illustration for the sleeve of their single “Mars to Liverpool”, written by the pair.

On an impulse, Wittwer decided to make and enter a hand-drawn sketch, which she created with colored pencils in a cartoonish style.

The Grand Prize she sought was a round-trip flight for two to New York, two nights’ stay at the Delta Marriott in midtown Manhattan, and VIP tickets to see the band “Liam Gallagher & John Squire” play on stage in that other Brooklyn – in New York’s Paramount Theatre.

The band judged the entries and chose Wittwer’s eight-inch-square drawing as the winner, to appear on the sleeve of a single of the song which will be available only to Portland area listeners of the radio station.

Wittwer’s sketch, which depicted a spaceship with Little Green Men, Liverpool’s Mersey River, and a row of houses by the river, with a pub in the right-hand corner. She later remarked, “The odd thing was, my artwork was judged along with four other very professional computer-graphic entries – but I won the top prize anyway. Warner Records paid for my complete trip to New York for two.”

Wittwer took her husband, Jim Mayer, along on the cross-country trip. “We had a great time in New York,” she told THE BEE. “We tried to cram a lot into two days. We went to the World Trade Center site; did the ‘HighLine Trail’, an abandoned rail viaduct; and we walked around Times Square.”

Back home again in Portland’s own Brooklyn, she confided that she does not really consider herself to be an artist, and has no plans to enter any other art-oriented contests in the foreseeable future.