Dear CFA Students and Parents,
The Center for the Arts and Visual Arts Departments at Henrico High are so proud to announce the extraordinary accomplishments of several students in our department at this year’s National Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. This year, our students received an unprecedented number of awards at the National level. In the past, we have had a single individual gold winner in a given year….. this year SIX CFA VISUAL ARTS STUDENTS WON NATIONAL AWARDS!!!!! GO WARRIORS!!!!!!!!
Our students achieved a total of FOUR individual National GOLD KEY awards (including one AMERICAN VISIONS), TWO individual National SILVER KEY awards, ONE SILVER KEY PORTFOLIO award and ONE GOLD KEY PORTFOLIO award-the last of which is the most exclusive difficult award in the country to win!!!!
Below is the breakdown of students-with Ellie Braun receiving the MOST national awards and the BIGGEST award any student from Henrico High School has ever received: Ellie Braun: Silver Key Award Gold Key Award Gold Key Portfolio Award drawing (Ellie is one of only 16 students in the country who was honored with this award and she has already received coverage in the Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20140318-907136.html , $10,000 in award money and major scholarship offers from top art schools AND her piece has been published as the main image on the National Scholastics website http://www.artandwriting.org/ as a result of this accomplishment!) Dylan Reissner: Silver Key Portfolio Award: wearable art Nia Campbell: Gold Key American Visions Award Nick Buckingham: Gold Key Award Sophia Carr: Gold Key Award Joseph Zampetti: Silver Key Award ALL of these students will be honored at a ceremony onstage at Carnegie Hall on June 6th! We are SO PROUD OF THESE KIDS!!!!!
See below for more details on the awards –excerpted from the Wall Street Journal article that contains Ellie’s name in the full version linked above- The nonprofit Alliance for Young Artists & Writers has announced the national winners of the 2014 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, the country’s longest-running and most prestigious award and recognition program for creative students in grades 7–12. Sixteen high school seniors received the highest Scholastic Art & Writing Awards honor, the Portfolio Gold Medal, which includes a $10,000 cash scholarship. In addition, all National Award–winning high school seniors are now eligible to apply for a special pool of more than $8 million in scholarships, set aside specifically for them through partnerships with the Alliance and esteemed colleges and universities around the country. From the outstanding pool of regional Gold Key recipients, an impressive panel of creative-industry experts chose more than 1,800 of the most talented students–representing 47 U.S. states as well as students in Washington, D.C. and American schools abroad–to receive national medals. These artists, authors, critics, educators and skilled professionals blindly judged works based on originality, technical skill and the emergence of a personal vision or voice–the original three criteria of the program’s founding in 1923. On June 6, 2014, students will be honored during a special awards ceremony live-webcasted from the world-famous Carnegie Hall, where they will be joined onstage by this year’s Alumni Achievement Award Recipient, Kay WalkingStick, whose career retrospective will open in 2015 at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. Following the ceremony, the annual Scholastic Art & Writing Awards Benefit will take place at The Edison Ballroom, and to further amplify the festivities that evening, the iconic Empire State Building will be lit in gold. Since its founding, the Awards program has identified the early promise of some of our nation’s most exceptional visionaries, including alumni such as Andy Warhol, Truman Capote, Richard Avedon, Philip Pearlstein, Sylvia Plath and John Updike, all of whom won when they were teens. More recently, Stephen King, Myla Goldberg, Zac Posen and Lena Dunham have become celebrated alumni of the program.