Gallery • 8 Photos

Coppell High School senior Jeffrey Wang’s painting “2 steps backward, 1 step forward” was submitted as part of his portfolio for the Scholastic Art and Writing competition. The artist won a Gold Medal and $12,500 scholarship for his portfolio and will be honored at Carnegie Hall this summer. Photo courtesy Michelle Hauske.

The clock rings 4 p.m. as senior Shraavya Pydisetti nervously refreshes her email. Peers crowding around her laptop, the scene seems like a reaction to a college acceptance email. In reality, Pydisetti was checking if she had won a national art competition.

And when she opens her email, success smiles back at her.

Pydisetti and senior Jeffrey Wang both won at the national level of the Scholastic Art and Writing competition, the former receiving two National Gold Medals for individual artworks and the latter a Gold Medal Portfolio. Wang also received a $12,500 scholarship for his portfolio. 

“It’s a huge deal,” art teacher Michelle Hauske said. “For us to have two seniors win in the same year is huge for Coppell and I’m so proud of them. If there are any people that deserve it, they deserve it.”

Starting at the John D. Rockefeller Estate museum in New York City, their artworks will be displayed at different exhibits around the country for two years. Both artists have been invited to the National Award Ceremony at Carnegie Hall in New York in July to get recognition for their awards.

“Carnegie Hall is such a huge place for the arts,” Pydisetti said. “It’s the kind of thing that has always been a dream. To have achieved that dream feels unreal.”

Celebrating their hundredth anniversary, the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards is a national competition set to recognize and award creativity and skill in teens across the country with 28 categories to compete in. At regional competitions, students compete for Gold Key, Silver Key or Honorable Mention awards. Gold Key recipients advance to the national competition for a chance at a Gold Medal, Silver Medal with Distinction, Silver Medal or scholarships. 

His fourth year competing in the Scholastic Awards, Wang decided to repurpose his AP 2-D Art portfolio he had been working on for two years and submitted six of his works into the competition. The portfolio, “Chasing the Red,” focuses on Wang’s cultural identity and the social impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. 

“Being Chinese, red is everything,” Wang said. “It’s an acceptance of my cultural identity and the limbo I feel being American but coming from China and the social dynamic of being an immigrant family in America.”

Four days after finding out he got a Gold Key and qualified for nationals, Wang was invited to a Zoom meeting by Scholastic where he found out he won the BLICK Art Materials Art Portfolio Award and scholarship.

The BLICK Art Materials Art Portfolio Award is one of five possible prizes given to Gold Medal portfolio winners. Many large institutions and entities, such as BLICK, sponsor scholarships to outstanding artists. 

“I thought that maybe one of my individual pieces got a scholarship award,” Wang said. “I entered the Zoom call and they said ‘Congratulations, you are one of eight in the U.S. and Canada to have won the National Art Portfolio Gold Medal,’ and I was like, ‘sick!’” 

After submitting six pieces from her IB exhibition works, Pydisetti earned three Gold Keys and one Silver Key at regionals, two of which got Gold Medal distinction. Both of Pydisetti’s winning pieces deal with paradoxes in female identity. Oil painting “Touched” revolves around the concept of good and bad touch, while “Balika Vadhu” sheds a light on child marriage through a cultural lens using the Tanjore style native to Chennai, India. 

“It’s a very old, traditional form and it’s specific to India,” Pydisetti said. “I knew I really wanted to make this piece for IB, because I knew I was going to make a piece over Indian heritage of women, so I also wanted to include an art form specific to India.”

Pydisetti looks forward to the award ceremony at Carnegie Hall and getting to meet fellow artists and Gold Medal winners.

“I see other people who have gotten the Gold Medal’s art and I am so lucky to be standing with people who are equally or even better than I am at art,” Pydisetti said. “These are people that share the same vision as me, work as hard as me, and to get to go up on stage with these people? That’s the best part.”

Follow @CHSCampus News on Twitter.