Students from Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School have received 42 nominations in the 2021 Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, a regional and national competition founded in 1923.
Nearly all the nominations are for work in the visual arts, predominantly photography, with one exception: Hardy Eville, a 16-year-old junior, received a Silver Key Award nomination for writing a personal essay about his summer job in a restaurant kitchen.
Mr. Eville, the son of Gazette managing editor Bill Eville, was also recognized for photography with three Gold Key nominations, a Silver Key nomination and an honorable mention.
One of his works, titled On Holiday, was additionally nominated for the competition’s prestigious American Visions and Voices Award.
“In my career (26 years now at MVRHS) I’ve only seen one other student be nominated for an American Visions Medal,” high school art, design and technology chair Chris Baer wrote in an email to the Gazette. “This is a big deal!”
On Holiday is a diptych, with side-by-side color portraits of the artist’s father and sister in the grassy yard of their home, each nicely dressed and wearing a whole-head seagull mask.
While the mask is the same in each image, subtle differences in posing and props bring out distinct personalities in the two bird-headed subjects, leading a viewer to muse on the nature of masks and identities.
Mr. Eville also photographed his father in more dramatic contexts. Shot through a second-floor window, The Long Night reveals the silhouette of an antlered man in lurid red light. In The Hunted, still with antlers but now in black and white, he emerges deerlike from a rhododendron bush.
Other student photographers with multiple nominations include sophomore Madeleine Bengtsson, with a gold, a silver and an honorable mention for her photography; sophomore Jocelyn Baliunas with a gold and a silver; sophomore Matti-Lyn Floyd with two silvers and freshman Nikeya Tankard with four honorable mentions.
Ms. Bengtsson’s gold-nominated Serenity captures a butterfly alight, amid yellow-painted woodwork, while Ms. Baliunas caught her human subject in mid-leap for her gold-nominated Not Your Average Chef.
Senior Margaret Sykes notched a gold nomination for photography with a poignant black and white image titled Death Call. Ms. Sykes also earned an honorable mention for drawing and illustration, the only entry for that category among the Island nominees.
Two ninth-graders also received Gold Key nominations for their photos, Katie Ogden for Phantom Field and Kaitlin Fingado for Handful of Horse.
Just two Vineyard students, junior Silas Abrams and senior Keaton Aliberti, were noted in the ceramics and glass division, each with an honorable mention. Ninth-grader Emma Burt’s honorable mention was the sole painting recognized.
Scholastic Art & Writing Award winners are chosen for originality, technical skill and the emergence of a personal vision or voice, in a blind adjudication process by panels of artists and writers who, over the years, have included poets Langston Hughes and Billy Collins, authors Edwidge Danticat and David Sedaris, artists Gary Panter and Roz Chast and many others.
Gold Key and American Visions-nominated works will be shown at a national competition in New York City later this year, Mr. Baer said, while Silver Key award winners are honored with regional events.
Full list of award winners:
Jocelyn Baliunas, Grade 10, Gold Key, Photography, Not Your Average Chef.
Madeleine Bengtsson, Grade 10, Gold Key, Photography, Serenity.
Maggie Bernard, Grade 10, Gold Key, Photography, Broken Beauty.
Hardy Eville, Grade 11, Gold Key, American Visions Award, Photography, On Holiday.
Hardy Eville, Grade 11, Gold Key, Photography, The Long Night.
Hardy Eville, Grade 11, Gold Key, Photography, The Hunted.
Kaitlin Fingado, Grade 9, Gold Key, Photography, Handful of Horse.
Katie Ogden, Grade 9, Gold Key, Photography, Phantom Field.
Margaret Sykes, Grade 12, Gold Key, Photography, Death Call.
Jocelyn Baliunas, Grade 10, Silver Key, Photography, Control.
Madeleine Bengtsson, Grade 10, Silver Key, Photography, Breaking Point.
Hardy Eville, Grade 11, Silver Key, Photography, Window Washer No.7
Hardy Eville, Grade 11, Silver Key, Personal Essay and Memoir, Summer School.
Matti-Lyn Floyd, Grade 10, Silver Key, Photography, Whiskey Dreams.
Matti-Lyn Floyd, Grade 10, Silver Key, Photography, Light By The Window.
Alissa May Habekost, Grade 9, Silver Key, Photography, Sugar High.
Olive Macphail, Grade 9, Silver Key, Photography, Leaving the Show.
Silas Abrams, Grade 11, Honorable Mention, Ceramics & Glass, Pot #2.
Keaton Aliberti, Grade 12, Honorable Mention, Ceramics & Glass, Wayward Ascent.
Madeleine Bengtsson, Grade 10, Honorable Mention, Photography, Blowin’ in the Wind.
Maggie Bernard, Grade 10, Honorable Mention, Photography, Once an Address.
Kayleigh Bollin, Grade 11, Honorable Mention, Photography, PTSD.
Kayleigh Bollin, Grade 11, Honorable Mention, Photography, Watching Him Be Swallowed.
Kayleigh Bollin, Grade 11, Honorable Mention, Photography, After Prom Night.
Emma Burt, Grade 9, Honorable Mention, Painting, Edward.
Lucia Capece, Grade 9, Honorable Mention, Photography, Am I Real.
Lydia Carlos, Grade 12, Honorable Mention, Art Portfolio, Internal Projections.
Sydney Emerson, Grade 9, Honorable Mention, Photography, The Boy In The Painting.
Hardy Eville, Grade 11, Honorable Mention, Photography, Under the Overpass
Kaitlin Fingado, Grade 9, Honorable Mention, Photography, Peek a Boo.
Ryan Giordano, Grade 11, Honorable Mention, Photography, Sea of Red.
Zach Mathias, Grade 9, Honorable Mention, Photography, Wide Eyed and Blue.
Isabella Merriam, Grade 10, Honorable Mention, Photography, What Divides Us.
Isabella, Merriam, Grade 10, Honorable Mention, Photography, Hecate.
Kristin_Perzanowski, Grade 11, Honorable Mention, Photography, Scarred Image.
Rachel Salop, Grade 12, Honorable Mention, Photography, Emerging Identity.
Rachel Salop, Grade 12, Honorable Mention, Photography, Seventeenth Birthday.
Margaret Sykes, Grade 12, Honorable Mention, Drawing & Illustration, Death Stare.
Nikeya Tankard, Grade 9, Honorable Mention, Photography, What a Drag.
Nikeya Tankard, Grade 9, Honorable Mention, Photography, Childhood Reflections.
Nikeya Tankard, Grade 9, Honorable Mention, Photography, Behind Bars.
Nikeya Tankard, Grade 9, Honorable Mention, Photography, Cereal.
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