Art students senior Lena Crown and sophomore MeiMei McComb took their talents outside of the classroom and into national competitions; they won. Crown entered the Scholastic Alliance Young Artists and Writers Competition, and won a national silver medal for her painting of senior Olivia Reed. For her silver medal, Crown said she not only gets “a whole lot of excitement,” but also an invitation to go to New York City for a ceremony at Carnegie Hall on May 31.
“It’s the [competition’s] 90th anniversary,” said art teacher Gillian Bailey. “Some of the high school students who have won include Andy Warhol, Sylvia Plath, Truman Capote, and Robert Redford. It’s a pretty big deal. This is nation-wide, and there are tens of thousands of people who enter, so it’s very prestigious.”
Bailey said that the best of the regional awards move on to the national round.
“In the regional competition, I entered a portfolio, which is eight pieces, and then I entered those same eight as individual pieces as well,” Crown said. “I won gold keys for my portfolio and for three individual paintings, including the one of Olivia.”
Crown said her painting of Reed was the first painting she did in her AP concentration.
“I decided I wanted to do portraiture with stained glass patterns in the background and somehow capture the person’s character,” Crown said. “I wanted to use nature imagery in the background of Olivia’s because it just fits with who she is and she wears a lot of earth tones.”
McComb, a photographer, won a national competition sponsored by the National Photographers Forum Magazine.
“In November I entered the Best of High School and College Photography contest that Mrs. Bailey introduced me to,” McComb said. “There are over 16,000 entries, and the fact that I am a finalist is really cool to me.”
McComb said she took the photo on her iPhone while she was in China.
“It was a photo of a man on an old gondola boat cleaning the trash out of the lake at the Summer Palace,” McComb said.
In her decision of what photograph to enter in the competition, McComb said she consulted with Bailey. From her top ten photos, they narrowed it down to two after going over composition and editing. Bailey said she provided a separate set of eyes.
“When you take photographs, you have a lot of them,” Bailey said. “Some of them you might be more attached to because you took them at a certain time or place, or you have a memory attached to them, but a viewer doesn’t necessarily have those same memories.”
In the competition, McComb won the prize of getting her finalist photograph published in a book as a reward for finishing 4th place or up.
“The magazine is publishing a book of the Best of High School and College Photography,” McComb said. “My picture’s in it, with my name and everything.”
Bailey said that both Crown and McComb are very talented students who not only put in time outside of class, but are also really invested in what they do.
“They deserve to win,” Bailey said. “They really put quite a bit of effort and thought into what they do, so I am very pleased to see them rewarded for it, because they have earned it for sure.”
