|
The defining moment in my life was when I was seventeen and was honored
by Scholastic. Being recognized by Scholastic meant that
little pat on the back, that little sense of confidence
that made me feel the doors were opening, and I could enter
a life that I loved, and I had somebody behind me saying
"This is OK." – Richard Avedon, Photographer, Alumnus: The Scholastic Writing Awards |
|
One piece was so sophisticated,
so elegant, I shook my head in awe. The overall quality
of writing was, to put it simply, 'rousing.' After thirty
years of reading high school writing I was prepared to be
bored. Instead, I felt like cheering. I've worked in schools
— I champion them — and what I've read proves
America — artistic America — is heading for a
rich new century. - Frank McCourt, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Juror: The Scholastic Writing Awards |
|
It gave a meaning to
my life that simply wasn't there before. I had no direction
of any sort. When I did win the award, besides being stunned
by the fact of having won, it really set a course I never
deviated from. - Philip Pearlstein, Artist, Alumnus: The Scholastic Art Awards |
|
The Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, by advocating the process
of creativity in education, nurtures the seeds of humanistic
inquiry which will bear the fruit of the future. The young
people served by the Alliance offer hope for our cultural
legacy, and the creative outpourings of the Alliances Scholastic
Art & Writing Awardees present proof positive that this
cultural legacy is in good hands indeed. - Rita Dove, US Poet Laureate (1993-1995) |
|
You know the magazine Scholastic? I won all of their prizes year after
year. One year I won all of them together, short story,
everything, and they did a piece about me. I was about 11
years old. - Truman Capote, Writer, Alumnus: The Scholastic Writing Awards |
|
|
When I won Scholastic Awards (nine gold keys in my senior year) it was an enormous
boost. All young people need support, especially in the
arts, which do not enjoy the same popularity as sports.
Being in high school and winning these Awards was extraordinarily
important. Without that encouragement, most young people's
enthusiasm for the arts would wane. It's critical for them
to have this support at that particularly vulnerable time
in their lives when they are making life decisions. - Duane Michals, Artist/Photographer, Alumnus: The Scholastic Art Awards |
Eavesdrop On Our Juror Panels
The Alliance conducted a series of interviews with our esteemed national art jurors in March 2007. Here’s what they had to say about the work they observed:
“We live in this media-saturated environment and there’s such a great tendency to explain and to examine, to analyze, and to intellectualize what’s essentially right here in your gut. You do it because you feel it. You do it because you’ve got to do it. And it doesn’t mean it doesn’t take intelligence. Somebody said that we only use 50% of our brains—that’s not true, artists use all their brain. They use the intellectual part, but they also use the part that’s emotional. And I’d say to teens, look, it’s about what your convictions are, what you feel deeply, and sincerely and honestly, and that’s all it’s about..”
“Of our three basic judging criteria, I think the most important one is the emergence of a unique, strong, consistent vision. The way you become an artist is by responding to your own spirit. Sometimes it takes you 40 years to become an artist and sometimes you find out early on who you are. The best example of that is in my field of portrait painting, the greatest of them all was an American, John Singer Sergeant, and he hit his full professional stride, his greatness, at the age of 21. At the age of 21! That’s very remarkable. Doesn’t happen very often. It can happen. If you’re going to be a great artist—if you’re going to have greatness in you, it’s going to come from inside and you’re going to respond to what excites you. There was a guy who was 85 years old and he didn’t know he was an artist and he started making art and he made about 3,000 drawings and he died at 92 and his stuff is world famous.”
“If I had to give some advice I would say, don’t have restrictions on the things that you make. Make a lot of work. And if you do choose this path, a creative path, then it’s really important to continue to make work.”
“If you’re going to make art, do it 100%. That’s what I would suggest.”
“I would say: find your own voice. Because I think the pieces that we’ve picked today were pieces that used imagination and creativity in a different way. They struck you as on the top of the heap.”
“To the teachers, I would say, let your students think, beyond the screening sense, give them freedom to experiment.”
“I’ve noticed a lot of assignment-based work and a lot of self-portraits, a lot of still life paintings, and to me that kind of thing doesn’t really provide a voice. The work that stuck out the most was out there or was pushing things or just generally had more guts to it.”
“I think there’s a lot of historical reference; there are things that I think are so historical that it almost becomes like a stereotype or a cliché.”
“There’s a lack of really a deep connection to contemporary surroundings. The work that we’ve selected has a lot of self-expression, which is important, but is also lacking a contextual connection to the kind of body of work being done on a serious level.”
“I have to keep reminding myself that these are students, you know what I mean? Where will this work go?”
“We’re looking at a lot of young people who probably wouldn’t until this decade have identified themselves in high school as artists. These are young people who are attracted to technology, who are attracted to new ways of synthesizing information, and they make really interesting and really challenging work to judge.”
“There’s a deadly mix between digital media and the interest in surrealism that adolescents have—it just allows them to kind of hyper-focus that vision, you want to defocus it. You really want to defocus it.”
“A historical context of anything is always needed to give depth.”
“One can be an artist in a lot of ways. You don’t have to go to school. But once you step into a classroom, you should be learning history at every minute.”
“Read the history, hide the books. Jackson Pollock was always reading history. I’ve read, I don’t know if it’s true, he hid his history books. He didn’t want people to know about it.”
“I think it’s good for young artists to be given assignments. When they’re 12 or13, they haven’t lived that long yet, maybe they don’t have a lot to say yet, so they’re given a certain structure to work with. And for me, the most positive thing about judging was how fresh all this material still looked to me. It was nice to see things that weren’t copies of Rauschenberg, Jones, Stella. They were fresh, they hadn’t yet had the weight of art history been put on them, so that was one of the things that I was thinking about as I was watching all these images go by this morning.”
“Well, what occurred to me was that everybody’s an artist when they’re real young and life beats it out of you and everybody’s got talent.”
“These young artists are innocent and they’re just coming up. You’ve got to be very brave. Some of them are really good and their work is beautiful. Some of it is really imaginative and mature and beyond their years. I think that that’s what’s got to be nurtured. That’s what you’ve got to say to them. You’ve got to say, ‘Stick with it, we’re going to give you all the help we can for college.’ That’s what this program is designed to do. I just hope that more than 1/10th of 1% stick with it.”
“Regarding still life paintings, it’s important to ask: Why are we picking objects to paint or make into a work? How does that relate to our life experiences and personal theories?”
“A strong composition stands out to me, compositions that the students decided upon for themselves. The other piece of advice that I’d have is that there’s a tremendous number of portraits, and if you want to make one that stands out, you really have to think more carefully about the composition and the lighting and the angle and things like that.”
“I would like to see more things from life. I would like to see more things that seem like a more direct, expressive response rather than this highly detailed. I think that’s a feeling of gesture, motion, and mass. A lot of these other more ephemeral things are not explored enough. Once in a while when I see one that has a little bit of that, I tend to vote for it. I think that’s harder to teach, but I think that’s what I’m looking for.”
“I will say on the positive side, I’m surprised at the discipline and ambition of a lot of the work.”
Maybe these young artists can’t go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art because they’re out there somewhere, but then it’s important for them see art in a books and keep searching.”
“You have to have a good image to begin with. The beginning. And throwing in, you know, a few buttons on PhotoShop doesn’t make the image any better. Saturation tools should be completely eliminated.”
“We noticed that there was obviously a lot of influence from media. Young women, picturing themselves with high heels and sexy skirts and stuff like that and it was not sexy. It was not original. It was just more of the same. So make pictures about your life You’ve got to be true to yourself and try to forget all this media stuff that’s constantly floating into your brain. Don’t imitate that.”
“I think it’s very, very pertinent that students are constantly advised and motivated to invest in observation. That’s the best way for someone to come into their own, observation, not so much being overeducated or being too schooled.”
The Alliance conducted a series of interviews with our esteemed national art jurors in March 2007. Here’s what they had to say about the work they observed:
“We live in this media-saturated environment and there’s such a great tendency to explain and to examine, to analyze, and to intellectualize what’s essentially right here in your gut. You do it because you feel it. You do it because you’ve got to do it. And it doesn’t mean it doesn’t take intelligence. Somebody said that we only use 50% of our brains—that’s not true, artists use all their brain. They use the intellectual part, but they also use the part that’s emotional. And I’d say to teens, look, it’s about what your convictions are, what you feel deeply, and sincerely and honestly, and that’s all it’s about..”
“Of our three basic judging criteria, I think the most important one is the emergence of a unique, strong, consistent vision. The way you become an artist is by responding to your own spirit. Sometimes it takes you 40 years to become an artist and sometimes you find out early on who you are. The best example of that is in my field of portrait painting, the greatest of them all was an American, John Singer Sergeant, and he hit his full professional stride, his greatness, at the age of 21. At the age of 21! That’s very remarkable. Doesn’t happen very often. It can happen. If you’re going to be a great artist—if you’re going to have greatness in you, it’s going to come from inside and you’re going to respond to what excites you. There was a guy who was 85 years old and he didn’t know he was an artist and he started making art and he made about 3,000 drawings and he died at 92 and his stuff is world famous.”
“If I had to give some advice I would say, don’t have restrictions on the things that you make. Make a lot of work. And if you do choose this path, a creative path, then it’s really important to continue to make work.”
“If you’re going to make art, do it 100%. That’s what I would suggest.”
“I would say: find your own voice. Because I think the pieces that we’ve picked today were pieces that used imagination and creativity in a different way. They struck you as on the top of the heap.”
“To the teachers, I would say, let your students think, beyond the screening sense, give them freedom to experiment.”
“I’ve noticed a lot of assignment-based work and a lot of self-portraits, a lot of still life paintings, and to me that kind of thing doesn’t really provide a voice. The work that stuck out the most was out there or was pushing things or just generally had more guts to it.”
“I think there’s a lot of historical reference; there are things that I think are so historical that it almost becomes like a stereotype or a cliché.”
“There’s a lack of really a deep connection to contemporary surroundings. The work that we’ve selected has a lot of self-expression, which is important, but is also lacking a contextual connection to the kind of body of work being done on a serious level.”
“I have to keep reminding myself that these are students, you know what I mean? Where will this work go?”
“We’re looking at a lot of young people who probably wouldn’t until this decade have identified themselves in high school as artists. These are young people who are attracted to technology, who are attracted to new ways of synthesizing information, and they make really interesting and really challenging work to judge.”
“There’s a deadly mix between digital media and the interest in surrealism that adolescents have—it just allows them to kind of hyper-focus that vision, you want to defocus it. You really want to defocus it.”
“A historical context of anything is always needed to give depth.”
“One can be an artist in a lot of ways. You don’t have to go to school. But once you step into a classroom, you should be learning history at every minute.”
“Read the history, hide the books. Jackson Pollock was always reading history. I’ve read, I don’t know if it’s true, he hid his history books. He didn’t want people to know about it.”
“I think it’s good for young artists to be given assignments. When they’re 12 or13, they haven’t lived that long yet, maybe they don’t have a lot to say yet, so they’re given a certain structure to work with. And for me, the most positive thing about judging was how fresh all this material still looked to me. It was nice to see things that weren’t copies of Rauschenberg, Jones, Stella. They were fresh, they hadn’t yet had the weight of art history been put on them, so that was one of the things that I was thinking about as I was watching all these images go by this morning.”
“Well, what occurred to me was that everybody’s an artist when they’re real young and life beats it out of you and everybody’s got talent.”
“These young artists are innocent and they’re just coming up. You’ve got to be very brave. Some of them are really good and their work is beautiful. Some of it is really imaginative and mature and beyond their years. I think that that’s what’s got to be nurtured. That’s what you’ve got to say to them. You’ve got to say, ‘Stick with it, we’re going to give you all the help we can for college.’ That’s what this program is designed to do. I just hope that more than 1/10th of 1% stick with it.”
“Regarding still life paintings, it’s important to ask: Why are we picking objects to paint or make into a work? How does that relate to our life experiences and personal theories?”
“A strong composition stands out to me, compositions that the students decided upon for themselves. The other piece of advice that I’d have is that there’s a tremendous number of portraits, and if you want to make one that stands out, you really have to think more carefully about the composition and the lighting and the angle and things like that.”
“I would like to see more things from life. I would like to see more things that seem like a more direct, expressive response rather than this highly detailed. I think that’s a feeling of gesture, motion, and mass. A lot of these other more ephemeral things are not explored enough. Once in a while when I see one that has a little bit of that, I tend to vote for it. I think that’s harder to teach, but I think that’s what I’m looking for.”
“I will say on the positive side, I’m surprised at the discipline and ambition of a lot of the work.”
Maybe these young artists can’t go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art because they’re out there somewhere, but then it’s important for them see art in a books and keep searching.”
“You have to have a good image to begin with. The beginning. And throwing in, you know, a few buttons on PhotoShop doesn’t make the image any better. Saturation tools should be completely eliminated.”
“We noticed that there was obviously a lot of influence from media. Young women, picturing themselves with high heels and sexy skirts and stuff like that and it was not sexy. It was not original. It was just more of the same. So make pictures about your life You’ve got to be true to yourself and try to forget all this media stuff that’s constantly floating into your brain. Don’t imitate that.”
“I think it’s very, very pertinent that students are constantly advised and motivated to invest in observation. That’s the best way for someone to come into their own, observation, not so much being overeducated or being too schooled.”