Students in the visual art program recently received regional awards from the Connecticut Scholastic Art Association. Overall, 14 students won awards with a total of eight Gold Keys, three Silver Keys, and two Honorable Mentions.

Gold Keys, Silver Keys, and Honorable Mentions are  presented by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, a nonprofit organization. Artworks are blindly judged by jurors who “look for works that exemplify the Awards’ core values: originality, technical skill, and the emergence of personal voice or vision.”

Gold Keys are given to the best submitted works, Silver Keys are given to works that demonstrate “exceptional ability,” and Honorable Mentions are given to works that illustrate “great skill and potential.” The award-winning works were on display from January 13 to February 1 at the Slipe Gallery at the Hartford Art School.

For their individual paintings, I Lok U ’20 and Nicole Morikawa ’21 won Silver Keys while Kali Ryder ’20 won a Gold Key. Dear Liu ’19 received a Gold Key for her portfolio while Jacqui Rice ’20 and Jennifer Li ’20 won Gold Keys in the drawing & illustration category.

Anaiz Robinson ’22, Zhurui Sheng ’20, and Peyton Wexler ’22 won Gold Keys in the photography category. Jiahua Chen ’20 won a Silver Key for his photography piece and Beckett Hornik ’20 also received an award in the photography department. Sheridan Figueroa ’21 and Grace Li ’21 received Honorable Mentions for their mixed-media pieces. Edward Guo ’19 won a Gold Key for his photography portfolio work.

Gold Key winners Ryder, Liu, Guo, Rice, Li, Robinson, Sheng, and Wexler will move on to national judging. Mr. J Bradley Faus, Program Director of Art, said “Hotchkiss visual arts has a statewide reputation for creating the highest quality student work as we recruit and admit students with impressive ability and commitment to image making. Ultimately our programs are driven by the power of exploration, discovery, individual invention, and self expression and these qualities and practices are what is most important and essential to our work and our visual art program.”