WA students have won a multitude of awards across a large variety of subjects such as sports and theater. However, art awards often go under the radar because they aren’t a huge public event. The Scholastic Art Awards program was founded in 1923 making it the longest-standing program for recognizing talented art students in the United States. Every year, WA students submit their creations to the program. The pieces of artwork that earn the highest award, the Golden Key, are displayed for the public at Breed Hall in Medford, Massachusetts from March 16th to March 23rd from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
This year, the students recognized with awards ranged across all ages, including a freshman, junior, and senior.
Senior Elizabeth Lu earned both Gold and Silver Key awards for two separate pieces.
“For the [gold key] piece, I wanted to portray the negatives of false news. The young puppy is innocently holding a ripped teddy bear, but the lighting and colors make it appear as if it is caught committing a heinous crime,” Lu said. “The red ribbon is supposed to represent blood to accentuate the ‘crime.’ I decided to depict the victim as a young dog because dogs and children are commonly associated with innocence, so it contradicts the false image. The piece overall is supposed to represent how different victims of fake news are ‘caught’, when in reality, nothing is truly wrong.“
Freshman Ryker Dang earned a Gold Key Award for his animation submission.
“The animation is of my original characters and a world that I’ve worked on and tweaked since summer last year,” Dang said. “The piece is really just a huge clump of my interests, the interests mainly being non-human characters.”
Junior Addi Preble earned a Silver Key Award for her work titled ‘Man and the Beast.’
“I drew inspiration for this piece from children’s book illustrations, wanting the overall feel to be bright and engaging,” Preble said. “The stitching used on the man’s action lines is different from the beasts’ [lines] to give further contrast between the two. What’s more [is that], the ink parts of the cliff were painted using moss, leaves, and sticks as brushes.”
Honorable mentions included senior Daanya Usami, senior Emily FitzPatrick, junior Brendan Chambers, and junior Madison Silvia.
