Each year the 2026 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards open for entries, and this year, many of our Atherton artists won awards. Artists who submit their work have the opportunity to win a Gold Key, a Silver Key, or an Honorable mention.
Many students from AP Art received keys for their pieces, or honorable mentions. Emmalynne Harrity (12) and June Petry (12) received Honorable mentions for their portfolios, and Nico Zitzer (12) received a Gold Key for his portfolio.
Despite the challenges that came with submitting, each artist got to submit their portfolio in its entirety. Rachel Gibbs, Atherton’s AP Art teacher, heavily encouraged students to submit their portfolio.
“I ended up having to resubmit it about 3 or 4 times because it kept deleting my progress. It was the same for my piece as well, luckily the very last hour I got it submitted, and I barely got it in time,” said Harrity.
“Mrs.Gibbs submitted a lot of my pieces. So she was really adamant about submitting a portfolio because it’s really good if your portfolio wins. But I also submitted a lot of individual pieces aside from my portfolio,” said Petry.
“The portfolio only consists of 6 pieces, so we had to carefully pick which ones looked the most cohesive and made the most sense together thematically,” said Zitzer.
Artists were required to submit information on their pieces, such as size and medium. Titles were also required to enter the pieces.
“We submit all the information for every individual piece and that’s the portfolio. We have to give information like what size, and the title,” said Petry.
Submitting pieces was the most challenging part for many artists, due to the inability to describe pieces. However, they were able to work around that, and use other ways to describe their artworks.
“You couldn’t describe what your piece was about, but you had to do a portfolio overview. We were able to add titles to pieces, so that way you could kind of explain what it was about. For picking my titles, I used songs that reminded me of the piece, or vice versa, and so sometimes the music would inform what the piece was about,” said Harrity.
Artists had to pick which pieces they wanted to submit, and then turned to Mrs. Gibbs for feedback.
“We had to go through a kind of a selection process as well, in which she would pick out pieces that she would think would win and I would add revisions to take pieces out or that I personally didn’t like,” said Harrity.
“When it comes to picking pieces to submit, Mrs. Gibbs will select a few individual pieces that she thinks will do well in the contest, and each AP student gets to submit their portfolio,” said Zitzer.
On some occasions, artists had to add to their pieces, or they wished they had added or taken out some parts.
“There were definitely some details I should have fixed on some of my pieces before submitting but I was too busy to do so. However, after winning a gold key for my portfolio and two silver keys for individual pieces, I had to make my pieces more sturdy so they would be ready to hang in a museum without falling apart,” said Zitzer.
“ I would add revisions or take pieces out or that I personally didn’t like and so that was most of the main stuff. I took some suggestions of what would work best with your portfolio and seeing and looked good as a whole,” said Harrity.
Each artist ended up submitting their portfolio, and individual pieces, with the help of Mrs. Gibbs. Many artists received awards for their artworks, and received the honor of having them hung in the KMAC Contemporary Art Museum.
“Everybody’s portfolio is really good. It’s really strong. And I think a lot of the work really speaks for itself. Everybody’s really good this year,” said Petry.
Artists who earned silver keys and honorable mentions will have their pieces displayed at the KMAC Museum from March 2nd through the 27th, with the closing celebration being on the 26th at 5pm. Gold key winners will have their artwork displayed from February 13th through March 13th.
Come to the KMAC Contemporary Art Museum and check out some of our Ravens awesome work!
