By Amanda Young ’11, Co-Editor-in-Chief
Thirteen students won 28 awards for their artwork in the 2011 regional Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, large numbers for an Upper School of only 250 students.
“I’m really impressed with the range of creativity of our students and very pleased that it’s noticed in outside venues,” Upper School Head Mrs. Stephanie Luebbers said.
Senior Baldur Tangvald won a Gold Key for his photography portfolio. Winning Gold Keys for single images were seniors Blythe Gross-Hutton, Ella Kim, Jordan Komnick, and Amanda Young (three Gold Keys); and juniors Yichen Dong and Emily Sprinkle. Young entered the competition with work created at Schain Studios.
Digital images of Gold Key winning pieces were forwarded to New York City for the national competition. National winners will be announced in March.
Seniors Kim, Komnick, and Young; and juniors Nathaniel Adams, Dong, DeVere Highsmith, and Adriana Ungerleider won Silver Keys.
Students who won Honorable Mentions are seniors Komnick, Ilana Habib, Gross-Hutton (three Honorable Mentions), Cody Pomeranz (two Honorable Mentions), and Tangvald; and juniors Dong, Jonas Luebbers (two Honorable Mentions), and Sprinkle.
Fine Arts Department Chair Ms. Carole Lichty-Smith and Art teacher Ms. Louise Hausman are thrilled with the number of awards CCDS achieved this year.
“This was a stunning year,” Ms. Lichty-Smith said. “We’ve consistently done quite well. What’s unusual this year is people are working in very unique ways. They got in because of their own drive and ambition.”
“This Honors class is very strong. There are some very experienced students,” Ms. Hausman said. “We have a number of students who set their sights on these competitions and go after them.”
Tangvald developed his nightmare themed Gold Key winning photography portfolio using a cyanotype process, which involves taking digital negatives of pictures and exposing them with sunlight onto photosensitive fabric.
“Mrs. Lichty-Smith said to push ourselves and try new things,” Tangvald said. “[Cyanotype] is different. It’s not common among high school students.”
Tangvald is also the first student at CCDS to win in the film & animation category.
Ungerleider was surprised to win a Silver Key for her photograph of a beach in Oregon titled “Absconditus,” which means hidden in Latin. She won an Honorable Mention for the same photograph in the 2011 international Photo Imaging Education Association competition.
“I didn’t really know how a big of a deal it was until I looked up [the competitions] online,” Ungerleider said.
Komnick, too, was excited to win a Gold Key for her print of a spiky ball and a dragon. “I started out with a tennis ball that instead of being fuzzy was spiky,” Komnick said. “We were asked to see what the image could become and I looked at it for a while and eventually saw the back of a spiky dragon.”
Her Silver Key and Honorable Mentions were for her collages on women’s self-image, where she thought about “women’s body language and expanded these idea throughout the canvas.”
The winning works will be exhibited at the RiverCenter Office Tower across from the Northern Kentucky Convention Center from Feb. 11 to 25. A ceremony honoring the regional winners will take place on Feb. 25 at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center from 6 to 9 p.m.
“This is definitely a cause to celebrate. We hope people come see the show and whose work is being chosen and figure out what about that work is special,” Ms. Hausman said. “It would also be great to support the people that won.”
Below is a photo slideshow of the winning artwork:
The header photo, Face of Arson, is one of Baldur Tangvald’s images in his Gold Key photography portfolio
