With over 320,000 artwork submissions in 2022, the Scholastic Arts Award is one of the most competitive and prestigious arts awards for middle and high school artists in North America. Selected by jurors of the visual arts community since 1923, the committee recognizes students’ talents on a national level. The Scholastic Arts & Writing Awards provide scholarships of up to $10,000 for the winners of their competitions. Art is judged not only by technical skill, but also by originality and artistic vision. This year, nine students across eight different artistic disciplines were selected for awards. Notably, Jerry Qiao ’22 was awarded the Connecticut Arts Administrators Association (CAAA) Best in Photography, and Yihan Ding ’22 won the Hartford Art School Scholarship. 

Among others, Jill Reichenbach ’24 received an honorable mention for her self portrait.  

She chose a landscape as the background of her piece, and much of Reichenbach’s inspiration for her winning piece, a self portrait, came from literature as well as the natural world. She said, “I found inspiration in books like Braiding Sweetgrass and The Hidden Life of Trees because they reinforce my sense that humans do not live above nature and cannot exist or thrive in individual vacuums. As a self-portrait with an intentionally cartoon-like version of me juxtaposed with a landscape, the piece analyzes my internal struggle with image and my sense of humanity found in the natural world.”

Many students have remained connected to the national and global art community through programs like the Scholastic Arts Awards. For artists like Reichenbach, the award is a great opportunity to engage with the nationwide art community and share her art work in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Creative expression is more vital than ever given the current global cultural climate, and many students have turned to art in these past three years as a way to express themselves. The range of media and student experiences represented in the selected pieces reflects both the robust art curriculum and diversity within the school’s arts scene. 

The full list of Hotchkiss awardees this year are:

Yihan Ding ’22

Shaivi Golyan ’23

Benjamin Herdeg ’23

Emily Iorio ’23

Sylvie Labalme ’23

Dariana Post ’23

Jerry Qiao ’22

Jill Reichenbach ’24

James Yae ’23