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Arts & Entertainment

Space Cadet Wins a Trip to the Big City

Matteo Lopez, a local second grader, won the Doodle 4 Google contest and traveled to New York City to accept his prize.

He may not be in space yet, but New York City is a pretty good alternative.

Seven-year-old of South San Francisco is spending the weekend in the Big Apple, courtesy of Google and his budding artistic skills.

, which challenged kids K-12 to design their own version of the Google logo. The second grader’s design was chosen from over 107,000 submissions across the country. His drawing—a playful if not extra-terrestially terrifying rendition of the Google logo—.

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Millions of people worldwide will catch a glimpse of Matteo’s outer-space-themed drawing. He and 39 other finalists came to New York for the grand award ceremony at Google’s offices in Manhattan. As the big winner—and youngest winner to date—he appeared on the Today Show on Friday morning wearing a t-shirt with his winning logo.

 “I want to be an artist and go to space,” Lopez said of his future.

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Even if he never makes it to the moon, the Monte Verde Elementary School student's interest in other worlds is already paying dividends for him and his hometown. Matteo has been awarded a $15,000 scholarship for college, and his school will receive a $25,000 grant to fund a computer lab. His mother, Maria Jauregui-Lopez, said the computer lab was what excited Matteo the most when he discovered he won.

In the meantime, Matteo and his family will be seeing the sights in New York until Sunday; it’s his first time in the city. They have already visited Times Square and Ground Zero and plan on seeing the Empire State Building, among other notable landmarks of Matteo’s choosing.

He has his heart set on seeing The Lion King on Broadway and the Nintendo World store in the Rockefeller Plaza. The family is being put up in the swanky Manhattan Hotel in Midtown, only blocks from Times Square.

The Doodle 4 Google contest is an annual competition that is meant to foster the company’s vision of creating the next generation of artists, thinkers and leaders in society. The theme for the 2011 competition was “What I’d like to do someday…” and submissions were judged based on artistic merit, creativity, theme communication and a supporting statement from the artist. Google has partnered with the Whitney Museum of American Art to display the 40 Regional Finalists in the contest. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is also displaying the finalist’s work.

When he isn’t winning fantastic scholarships and jet setting around the country, Matteo leads a pretty normal life. Along with the obvious interest in video games, Matteo is a big fan of cartoons, notably Sponge Bob Square Pants and Super Mario Brothers. While the big-smiled second grader has a lot of interests, his passion at the moment is obvious.

“If you ask him right now,” said his mother, Maria Jauregui-Lopez, “he is all about the drawing.”

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