Millville Woman's Poster Wins Contest by Exemplifying Spirit of Raceways
By Edward Van Embden
Press of Atlantic City
pressofatlanticcity.com

Millville, N.J. (July 31, 2008) – Just days before the deadline, Diane Roberts' husband said he walked down to the kitchen one night to find his wife exhausted and slumped over the counter as she was making some final changes to her submission.

While working on a separate drawing commissioned by New Jersey Motorsports Park, Roberts said she heard about the raceway's poster competition, and with a little more than a week left, decided to give it a shot.

At the raceway's clubhouse Monday, Roberts' poster was unveiled as the contest winner.

The local artist was presented with a cash award and news that her poster, which combines elements of vintage and modern racing along with the raceway's World War II-era aviation theme, will be distributed to 40,000 racing fans.

"I had about a week to panic and do it but I really wanted to do it," she said. "I drove my family crazy the whole time."

Roberts has created other notable works, including memorial portraits of the late Carmen DeGregorio, a retired Millville police officer who died saving a woman's life, and two pilots from the Blue Angels and Snowbirds aerial demonstration teams who died during separate practice incidents.

NJMP General Manager Donald Fauerbach said the competition was judged by raceway principal and Virginia International Speedway owner Harvey Siegel.

Roberts' piece was chosen, Fauerbach said, because it best incorporates the criteria raceway officials were looking for with other creative elements.

On the poster, three vintage airplanes fly overhead as three racecars, two vintage and one modern, race below. In the middle is the portrait of a pilot, one who Roberts said is a composite of historical photos she researched.

"The thing she added that really caught our attention was the pilot," Fauerbach said.

Roberts said the original poster was her first physical draft. In her mind, she said, she thought about what the poster needed and made adjustments as necessary. When the pencils hit the paper - the work is done in colored pencil - she already knew in which direction she wanted to take it.

Creating the drawing she was commissioned for, which includes various motorsports racing vehicles and an airplane, was less stressful, she said.

"It's a little bit harder," she said of competing in the contest. "When it's commissioned, you can bounce ideas off of someone, but with this, I couldn't."

She completed the poster a couple of days ahead of schedule and framed it to keep it safe, but almost as soon as she framed it, she decided to take it out and make some adjustments. This went on, she said, until it was time to hand it in.

Looking at the winning poster, she said she could still see some things others might not notice that she would change if she could.

"That's just me being a perfectionist," she said. "I have to pick things apart."

Fauerbach said the posters will be given away beginning today as the raceway hosts an invitation-only celebration of the track's opening for its members, area politicians and those who helped usher the raceway to completion.

In all, he said, 40,000 of the posters will be distributed. But when they're gone, they're gone.

The original, Fauerbach said, will eventually be auctioned off at an event yet to be chosen, with the proceeds going to the Green Flag Committee, the nonprofit arm of the raceway.