Allie Neugeboren, Features Editor
@allieneugiecourant
The National Scholastic award is an opportunity for professionals in the writing and visual arts to gather work and evaluate it based on originality, creativity, voice, and skill. Art teachers from all around the United States submit four pieces in which they feel their students tone and voice is shown best. To be accepted into the National Scholastic, students have to qualify by achieving the gold medal in regional awards. Those awards are pushed forward to the national review board and then judged. Nationally, only one percent of what’s submitted out of 320,000 pieces get chosen for a national award.
Even though the percentage was small, junior Hannah Gelnaw won the gold medal for a photography piece. Hannah submitted her piece entitled, 4th of July, solely because of her art teacher, Mrs. McDonagh’s, recommendation. “I did not expect to win anything when I entered the competition, so having my photo do as well as it did was very exciting,” she said.
Hannah states her inspiration for this photo was from a candid assignment in her art class. “We were told to photograph people naturally in a way that shows personality or tells a story,” she said. Hannah knew this picture could embody those guidelines, “I felt like the scene of an American flag over a summer day as people played frisbee perfectly encapsulated this idea of an American summer and the feeling of a fun relaxing summer day with friends,” she said.
Another winner of the 2016 National Scholastic Gold Award was sophomore, Cece Challe. Unlike Hannah, Cece decided to enter the competition for poetry. She first submitted a portfolio of three versatile poems regionally. One piece called, Windswept, was picked nationally for Gold.
Cece enjoyed learning about the competition and wanted to join the running. “When I stumbled across the ad for the competition I didn’t really think much of it, but as I started to do more research I became very interested,” she said. “I’m really passionate about poetry, and saw this competition as a window to start sharing my work with others.”
Cece explains how she learned and grew from this experience. “I was a little hesitant to submit my poems at first because I was nervous for people to read them,” Cece said. “However, this experience has taught me that if you don’t take risks and do things that scare you then you’ll never succeed.”
Art teacher, Jeanne McDonagh, has been teaching here for more than 27 years and has seen multiple NCHS students and alumni win an honor of a National Scholastic Award. She takes note of the purpose and significance of this award, “Scholastics art is to recognize and celebrate artistic achievement in teenagers. It’s open only to high school, but they do include 8th graders on a different level.”
Many famous artists like Truman Capote, Lena Dunham, and Andy Warhol have gone on to make a career in the arts from previously winning the National Scholastic Award as a teenager. Mrs. McDonagh also recognizes past NCHS students who have become professional artists after high school and college. “Ben Manning is now finishing up at Brigham Young University in Utah, majoring in photography, and Zack Zannini is a professional photographer in New York City working at Parsons, all post NCHS students of mine.”
“Jurors can also sense the level of depth and dedication students have to their art,” Mrs. McDonagh said.
