Chamblee Charter High School is full of talent, whether it be academic, athletic, or artistic, and recently, sophomore Klara Nitsche and juniors Victoria Lin and Stella Demer were recognized for their artistic talents through the Scholastic Art Competition.
The competition, hosted by Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in Georgia, takes place annually on a national and regional level. Winners can either be given a Gold Key, the highest honor, a Silver Key, the next highest, or an honorable mention. About one third of the 333,000 applicants receive recognition.
“I got the silver key, which is pretty cool,” said Nitsche. “I didn’t even think I’d actually get anything. I just didn’t like [my painting] very much and was kind of disappointed with how it turned out because it didn’t look like I wanted it to.”
Despite the initial disappointment, Nitsche was awarded with a Silver Key. Lin also got silver, and Demer got an honorable mention. With each level comes different perks, ranging from large scale national exhibitions to smaller local recognitions.
“My art is going to be put in print, and then put in an exhibition in SCAD for a couple of weeks, along with the other gold key [and] silver key [winners],” said Nitsche. “Gold key winners get their actual physical art piece in the exhibit, silver keys get a print,” said Nitsche.
The competition was advertised both in school and out. Nitsche discovered it through art class at Chamblee, and Lin through an outside art class. No matter how they discovered the competition, everyone had to follow the same multi step application process.
“You’ve gotta pay five bucks, and then there’s a whole online process and that was a lot,” said Nitsche. “Your teacher and you had to have some joint account online, and then you’ve got to fill out a form. The application form was online, so you had to answer a couple of questions regarding contact methods, link the account with your art teacher, and briefly describe what your art piece was and what it was made out of.”
The competition is open to all forms of art, from writing to painting to sculpture, and Nitsche chose to submit a painting of her dad which she called “Micnit”, a nickname for her dad that is short for his full name, Michael Nitsche.
“I originally painted this to be my dad’s Christmas present, [but also] turned it in as a homework assignment in art where we had to draw a portrait of someone who evoked emotions from you,” she said. “Mrs. Guyton really liked it and suggested I enter it to Scholastic!”
In her painting, Nitsche sought to illustrate more than what meets the eye.
“I used a lot of colors for the skin because the human skin holds so many colors,” Nitsche said. “If you really sit down and look at it you can pick apart the blues, greens, pinks and purples hiding under the surface of the skin. In my portraits I like to exaggerate those colors and experiment with all different kinds of colors, warm tones and cool tones together! It makes it so much more fun to paint and deconstructing the subject instantly becomes more exciting when you get to use the raw colors that are hiding underneath the skin.”
For Lin, her pencil sketch represented her brother and his personality.
“I drew my brother because he’s a significant part of my life and is always doing weird and interesting things,” she said. “This drawing is based off a picture I took of him when we were in Boston and eating Italian subs. I thought the expression on his face was really unique, so I decided to draw it.”
As Silver Key winners, Lin and Nitsche will have their paintings displayed at SCAD, and neither knows whether or not they want to go to see it in Savannah.
“It depends on how long they have it up, because if they have it up for a three day period I might go, but [otherwise] probably not,” said Lin.
For Nitsche, it is still up in the air.
“I might,” she said, “my mom and dad were really excited about it, so probably for them.”
