It’s not just Powell youth who win big at the Wyoming State Fair. 

Local 32-year-old DJ Hamilton won Best of Show in the crafted arts category for his large, framed, diamond art picture of a phoenix, a nod to the Powell man’s love of Greek mythology. 

This is the first time Hamilton won the top award at the county fair, prior to that he hadn’t even known it was possible for his artwork to head down to Douglas for state. 

Park County Events Coordinator Billy Wood said it’s rare for an adult to make it to the state fair in an open class from the area, much less to do so well. 

“I’ve done second places and third places and a lot of different stuff and things like that,” Hamilton said. “But yeah, I just lost my mind — the grand champion of the Powell fair then best in show.”

Hamilton, who goes to Northern Inc. and said he has high functioning autism, has been into diamond art for about eight years, ever since his mom introduced him to the art form of gluing small beads together in colored patterns to create pictures. 

This year’s entry, he said, took him a while to create, and while he would occasionally have a little bit of help putting on beads, and a friend contributed a large wooden frame, for the most part it was Hamilton completing the painstaking process. 

“Just the diamond art alone was five and a half months doing this,” he said. 

It wasn’t cheap to create. Hamilton said it cost between $250 and $400 for all the supplies, so he worked odd jobs for friends to gather enough money to get it done. 

“This one’s the biggest one I’ve done,” he said. 

Someone has already offered him $1,000 for his Best in Show piece, and while Hamilton has sold his works in the past, he’s not sure yet if he’ll sell it. After all, he said, he does have space for it in his living room.