By Nicole Thomas
SHS hauled in three American Visions honors and 6 gold keys, while Armstrong Middle School added another four gold keys to the District’s award collection in the 2017 Mississippi Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. .
SHS’s Helen Peng, Hannah Jian, and Riley Hardy were awarded the judges’ highest marks for their work, which earned each of them an American Visions nomination.
The three American Visions awards reflect the strength of SHS’s award-winning fine arts program and its history of developing the exceptional talents of our student artists.
Peng collected three gold keys while Jian and AMS’s Kami Warren earned two gold keys each. AMS students Preston Montgomery and Audrey Swortzel, along with Hardy, also took gold keys for their work.
The students’ original works, selected from more than 2,000 entries recognizing outstanding achievement in the arts, will be on display at the Mississippi Museum of Art as part of an exhibit that opens next month.
The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards continues to be the longest-running, most prestigious recognition program for creative teens in the U.S. celebrating the vision, ingenuity, and talent of young artists. Student submissions are blindly judged by leaders in the visual arts. Jurors look for works that exemplify the Awards’ core values: originality, technical skill, and the emergence of personal voice or vision. All Gold Key winners advance to compete at the national competition.
The Awards are presented by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose mission is to identify students with exceptional artistic and literary talent and present their remarkable work to the world through the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Students receive opportunities for recognition, exhibition, publication, and scholarship.
The exhibit opens February 11 and closes April 2 at the Museum. Admission is free and open to the public. Here’s a sneak peak of what will be on display along with a complete list of winners:
2017 AMERICAN VISIONS NOMINEES
Starkville High School
1. Riley Hardy, Pure Crystal
2. Hannah Jian, Life in Rural China, American Visions
3. Helen Peng, Journey of Persistence
2016 GOLD KEY AWARDS
Starkville High School
1. Riley Hardy, Pure Crystal
2. Hannah Jian, Life in Rural China;Dance and Dust
3. Helen Peng, Indivisible; Journey of Persistence; Self Portrait
Armstrong Middle School
1. Preston Montgomery, Brittnay
2. Audrey Swortzel, Fish Face
3. Kami Warren, Tyler; Leslie
2016 SILVER KEY AWARDS
Starkville High School
1. Jack Perry, Pure Crystal
2. Gizem Karsi, Kumsal
Armstrong Middle School
1. Kassidy Hollis, Underneath It All
2. Preston Montgomery, Ms. Minor
2016 HONORABLE MENTION AWARDS
Starkville High School
1. Lawson McReynolds, Crystal Clear
Armstrong Middle School
1. Kassidy Hollis, Magenta Chucks
Congratulations to our students and their art teachers, Andrew Lark and Mikel Franklin, on these outstanding achievements!