WORKERS OF ART
Students in Cumberland High’s advanced placement arts class are serious about their subject
Apair of pliers clasps a young woman’s nose. A person clad in a hoodie and Converse Chuck Taylors sits in a box. A young man slouches on top of a car amid a group gathered at night, an illuminated puff of smoke emanating from his mouth.
These are among the submissions from Cumberland High School students that won 2016 Rhode Island Scholastic Art Awards, the local program of the national Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Their work has been hanging in a gallery at Salve Regina University in Newport for the past two weeks.
The six submissions that won came from five students in Betsey MacDonald’s AP Studio Art class: Allison Maria, Jessica Paolo, Ashley Butler, Nicolette Hayes and Jean Amore, who won for both her portfolio and “Deviated Septum” drawing.
Maria also won a “Gold Key” award for her portfolio, which included eight works of photography.
“A lot of them were mostly to do with portraiture and light and how I can kind of incorporate that together to create a bunch of unique pieces,” the CHS senior said.
She developed a fascination with photography in middle school, when she became interested in her grandfather’s film cameras and decided to buy one of her own.
After getting into all four schools where she applied, Maria will be attending Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where she plans on double-majoring in photography and art history.
Paolo also won for her portfolio, titled “Inhabitants of the Dreamscape.” Portfolio submissions are required to include eight pieces.
“The things I submitted are really a giant mishmash of everything I’ve ever really tried to do,” she said, “because my art is really about experimentation and playing with different mediums in order to create a sort of unique experience every single time.”
One of her submissions was an eight-page comic that she completed in about five months for her AP concentration last year.
“With that one piece that took me so much time, I was able to create this style and use it with all of my other new pieces,” she said. Her portfolio also included a portrait piece and some works that involved creating characters – she was striving to become an animator – and placing them in different settings.
Like Amore and Maria, Paolo won a Gold Key for her portfolio. They are among 22 Rhode Islanders who won Gold Keys for their eightpiece compilations. Silver Key winning art was also recognized and displayed at Salve Regina, but only Gold Key winners will be sent to Scholastic’s New York City office for judging on the national level.
Nationwide, gold medals will be awarded to the “most outstanding works in the nation,” and 16 students with gold medal portfolios will receive $10,000 scholarships. Select students earning silver medal portfolios are eligible to receive $1,000 scholarships.
Out of more than 180 winning works in Rhode Island, half received Gold Key recognition. Of the Gold Key winners, five were recognized as best in show and designated as American Visions & Voices Nominees – including a painting by Cumberland High School senior Nicolette Hayes.
One of the five pieces will earn an American Visions & Voices Medal.
Hayes’ piece, titled “Let It Sink In,” depicts paintbrushes of various sizes and a paint-filled palette sitting in a sink. The reflection of a woman can be seen in the shiny silver arc of the faucet.
“I really think art is about getting a different view of things and really showing how things are looked at [from] a different view, and our project for Ms. Mac was actually to do a reflection piece,” she said. “It was really nice to get a view of the art room that everyone under-appreciates: the sink that helps everything get clean.”
Hayes comes from a family of artists, but she was initially hesitant about getting into art – until she took Art 1. She loved it and was able to skip Art 2 and 3.
She said of her current AP Studio Art class – an offering CHS has only had since last year – “It’s my hardest class this year, no doubt about it.” AP Art students must complete 24 pieces by May.
“It’s remarkable to me to see the improvement when somebody’s doing that amount of work,” said Betsey MacDonald, who teaches AP Studio Art at CHS. “I was floored.”
MacDonald, who taught chemistry and biology before switching to art, added that her students have been “such an inspiration” for her own art. MacDonald is a painter, and her subjects are often horses, cows or dogs.
Some of her students hoped to attend free workshops for winners today at Salve Regina. The offerings include figure drawing, ceramics, photography, graphic design, art history and portfolio building.
Applicants submitted their work online and dropped it off Jan. 6 and 7. Winning artwork was exhibited at Salve Regina’s Hamilton Gallery from Jan. 19-30, with an awards ceremony on Jan. 24.
“I was just so impressed, because there was a lot of different mediums, like photography, painting, illustration, stuff like that,” Maria said of going to see the gallery with her family. “It was really incredible to see all the different kinds of art that’s up there, and I felt really proud because I got to be a part of that.”
Since 1923, the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards have acknowledged “the vision, ingenuity, and talent of our nation’s youth.” The awards are presented by the nonprofit Alliance for Young Artists & Writers. Alumni of the program include Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly, Sylvia Plath, Truman Capote, Lena Dunham, Zac Posen and Richard Linklater.
Last year, students across the country submitted 300,000 works of art and writing, and 68,000 were recognized at the regional level. The top 2,000 submissions earned national medals and were celebrated in a Carnegie Hall ceremony.