Scholastic Art Awards at Aurora

Every year, Scholastic has it’s Scholastic Art and Reading Awards for students all across the country. Participating in the contest and being awarded something does open the opportunity to earn scholarships and other amazing opportunities that the contest has to offer. Recently, a good number of students from Aurora have won both gold and silver keys and have gained honorable mentions. A good majority of students that have won are AP Art students, but there are still people that have been mentioned on the wall right across from the library. If you want to see some of the artworks that were made you can see them in the corridor leading to the lunchroom.

I asked Tuuli Pirinen, an AP Art Senior who had submitted some of her art into the contest on what some of the rules and awards were for. The AP required that you submit a few things, but everything else is left up to the student. “Since I'm a senior and in AP Art, we actually submitted two whole portfolios and then we were able to submit as many extra individual pieces as we wanted to. I ended up submitting a total of 18 pieces this year! I submitted two portfolios, which each had 8 pieces, and then two extra individual pieces. Every piece in the portfolios was also counted as an individual.” Pirien had won two gold key’s from her art portfolios and five gold keys and three silver for her other individual pieces.

There are multiple rounds with the contest, this just one of the first. “This is the first round, we submitted digital pictures of our works to the Scholastics website and they were judged from there. The gold and silver key winners were displayed at Kent State University at Stark.” The highest award I believe you can receive is being able to become a literary ambassador for an entire year. Nonetheless, Aurora students still might participate at the national level and make an appearance in New York. “Now all gold key winners are being judged for nationals which will be held in New York City. We will find out in March if any of our pieces or portfolios qualified.” Tuuli Piriren might be one of the seniors that make it all the way to nationals so let’s wish them all good luck and congratulations on their accomplishments.