Lansing High School seniors Lydia Krogh and Nat Deis won top honors for art in the international Scholastic Art & Writing Awards competition.  Krogh's perspective drawing, 'When the Bell Rings', won a gold medal, and Deis's digital art work, 'It Might be Dangerous, but I'm Going it Alone', a silver medal in the national level of the competition.

"Both girls took their projects to a completely new level," says Lansing High School art teacher Jessica Stratton.  "That's why they earned recognition -- they made it their own.  They certainly have a lot of personal voice in their work.  Their technical skill is off the charts and the creativity and original thought that they brought to their work is what Scholastic noticed."

Krogh, Deis and Rachel Hulbert won top honors in the regional competition, receiving gold keys for their work.  Two of Hulbert's pieces merited gold keys and she also received two silver keys.  All three were awarded Honorable Mentions for additional pieces.  Megan Dean received a silver key for a sculpture.  Aurora Allen (painting), Madeline Czymmek (printmaking), Megan Firth (digital art), John Huether (digital art), Margot Miller (digital art) and Jack Myers (film and animation) received Honorable Mentions.

The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards is the nation’s largest and longest-running visual and literary arts program.  It recognizes the work of students in grades 7 through 12.  This year 300,000 art and writing entries were submitted internationally.  17,000 earned regional gold keys which qualified them to be considered for national medals.

Of the 17,000 gold key recipients, 2,200 entries were recognized with national gold and silver medals, only 0.7%.  Originality, technical skill, and the emergence of personal voice or vision are considered in both the art and writing competitions.  Stratton notes that the last Lansing student to earn a medal on the national level was Erica Harper in 2012.  She adds that to her knowledge this is the first time two Lansing artists have made the Nationals in a single year.

Gold and silver winners are invited to a ceremony at Carnegie Hall in New york City where they will receive their medals.  Both Krogh and Deis plan to attend.  Gold medal works will tour museums around the United States for a year after the awards ceremony.

Krogh says she was not initially excited about a dry class assignment to render a perspective drawing.  She painstakingly worked on the perspective, but took a decidedly freer approach to what is usually a formal style of drawing.  Finding a balcony looking down on the cafeteria doors, she added an element of words rising from the entryway.


"I decided to make it fun by adding a more conceptual element," she says.  "I picked what I thought was the coolest space to draw, a neglected overlook into the cafeteria, so I got a view looking down.  I worked on it for weeks, but since it was looking down into the cafeteria entrance I wanted to capture the noise that comes up from the cafeteria, which is why I have a cloud of words coming up from it."

The result is a multi-sensory perspective piece using colors, lines and distortion to portray a specific moment in the school schedule.  She titled it 'When the Bell Rings' to capture what she calls 'that happy chaos that happens when the bell rings'.

Dies's work is a self portrait in the Digital Art category.  She photographed herself in her basement studio, then spent many weeks working on the piece in Photoshop.  She superimposed words on the source image, creating literal layers of shading and color and figurative layers of meaning.  The words were taken from her favorite video game series that she says define her, using them to shade the picture.  Particles fly into the air from her head.  The hat is entirely made of periods to represent a finely woven texture.


"I wanted a pose that I thought represented my personality very well, kind of hidden and dark.  In Photoshop I could take a certain spectrum of colors and shades.  I wanted to go with blue to pink tones because they were subdued, while still reflecting the natural colors of a person.  With those tones I could take it one layer at a time.  Sometimes it was difficult to get the form correct.  Especially with the hair, I wanted to keep words in there so I chose a lot of short names and words to create the texture."

Both women plan to continue studying art.  Deis plans to attend the New Media digital art program at TC3 next year.  After finishing that program she hopes to transfer at Rochester Institute of technology (RIT) or Alfred University.  Krogh will attend RIT in the fall to study industrial design.

"Art is everywhere in my life," Krogh says.  "You see it everywhere.  When you learn how to draw you learn how to see, so you see art in everything whether it's an exhibition downtown or the light playing off the trees as you're driving in the car.  I genuinely enjoy it because I enjoy pushing creativity."

Both artists say they didn't expect their work to be so honored.  Krogh says she was surprised, but gratified that the drawing won a gold medal.

"It was humbling," she says.  "I was floored and honored, and it was a confirmation that I am going on the right path."

"I entered a bunch of work to see what would happen," Deis adds.  "I wasn't very hopeful, but when the results came in (I was surprised to win) a gold key.  And I didn't realize it was up for National -- there are so many pieces it never occurred to me I could ever get into National.  I feel great about that."

v11i15