Hannah Cohen used cardboard, paper, rubber cement, and ink from old newspapers to create a vibrant industrial cityscape. Her innovative mixed-media piece is one of the winners of the 2008 Boston Globe Scholastic Art Awards.
The awards were started in 1950 by a group of art educators from Massachusetts who worked with Globe staff members. The program is an affiliate of the national Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, currently administered by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers Inc.
Students in grades 7-12 enrolled in public, private, and parochial schools in Massachusetts submitted examples of painting, photography, sculpture, mixed media, printmaking, and sculpture. Judges selected winners for the Gold Key, Silver Key, and Honorable Mention awards from 3,487 individual entries submitted by students from 376 participating schools.
Winners will be presented with awards today at John Hancock Hall at 180 Berkeley St. The winning pieces are on display in an exhibit at the Massachusetts State Transportation Building at 10 Park Plaza through Feb. 22. The exhibit displays the 342 Gold Key pieces and the 573 Silver Key pieces.
Gold Key winners will compete in New York City in May for the Gold and Silver awards. Five of the Gold Key winners have been nominated for the national American Vision Award, featuring work from 84 regions.
Those five students are Cohen, of Holliston High School; George Coffin of Belmont High School; Courtland Kelly of Gloucester High School; Min Kim of Acton Boxborough Regional High School; and Meghan Pierce of Masconomet Regional High School.
Coffin, who created three self-portraits titled "Views From the Day," said comic books are his inspiration.
"I like how different frames in comic books all kind of fit together," Coffin said.
Coffin, who is interested in multimedia art, illustration, and fashion, painted the three self-portraits on three separate canvases and then fastened them together. "I created a pretty cool perspective on everything," Coffin said.
Cohen is interested primarily in mixed media art. Her piece, "City," is a cityscape she created by cutting and folding 5-by-7-inch squares of paper and pasting them with rubber cement to a large piece of cardboard. Cohen then rubbed sheets of newspaper on top of the cityscape and pulled the sheets off, leaving ink that created an industrial look.
"I made up the cityscape in my imagination," Cohen said. "I've always had an interest in paper. . . . I used to make my own greeting cards. This was something I tried out and really liked doing."
College-bound high school seniors also had the option of submitting art and photography portfolios, including eight images of their artwork. Judges chose 192 of the 622 entries for the national competition.
Four portfolio artists won the $1,000 Boston Globe Scholarship Art Award. The scholarship money will go toward tuition at an institution of higher education of the student's choice.
The winners of the portfolio category are Claire Rayton of Northampton High School; Kelly Seyfarth of Wellesley High School; Sarah Gringas of Dighton-Rehoboth Regional High School; and Paul El-Hashem of St. John's Preparatory School.
El-Hashem submitted eight pieces including a painting, etchings, and linoleum cuts. Printmaking is the scholarship winner's main focus.
"Printmaking isn't just one piece [of art]," El-Hashem said. "It's the ability to capture pictures in one piece and then manipulate them through changing colors and applying other techniques."
At today's prize ceremony, the Honorable Mentions will be awarded at 11:30 a.m. followed by the Silver Keys at 1 p.m. and the Gold Keys at 2:30 p.m. The exhibit of winning work is free and open to the public weekdays 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on weekends from noon to 5 p.m.
