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‘It Just Keeps Getting Better and Better’

Skye Roberts used to have this one friend, a friend who was very special to her.

Then her friend stopped talking to her and the friendship evaporated.

Roberts, a student at Valley Regional High School, was certain it was her fault. She tried everything she could think of to fix it. She worried she was trying too hard and driving her friend away. She worried she was not trying hard enough. She worried that, no matter what she did, it was killing the relationship. Her worries seeped into other parts of her life, affecting her life at home, at school, and her other friendships.

Then Roberts decided to write her friend a letter. “And I learned it wasn’t my fault,” she says. “They were going through something. It wasn’t me.” That revelation had an emotional impact on her and she decided to explore that in a mixed media work of art entitled “Overwatered,” which garnered a first place award in the mixed media competition of Shoreline Art Alliance’s Future Choices 2023 competition. The complete list of award winners can be viewed online at https://www.shorelinearts.org/future-choices-2021-awards.

As in past years, the artwork of the award winners, until recently on display as part of an exhibition at the Sill House Gallery at the Lyme Academy of Fine Arts at Lyme, was of extremely high quality. The awards program, which has been going on for more than 38 years, is open to students in grades 9 to 12 at any high school in Shoreline Art Alliance’s 24-town area which includes Branford, Chester, Clinton, Cromwell, Deep River, Durham, East Haddam, East Hampton, East Haven, East Lyme, Essex, Guilford, Haddam, Killingworth, Lyme, Madison, Middlefield, Middletown, North Branford, Old Lyme, Old Saybrook, Portland, Salem, Westbrook.

Award categories include Ceramics, Drawing, Mixed Media, Painting, Photography, Prints, Sculpture, Digital Art, and Video, and there is also an award for high schools that work to keep the arts a vibrant part of the curriculum. The work is reviewed and judged by a panel of professional artists and, as part of the competition, some of the students receive invitations to apply for scholarships and take part in other opportunities.

At a recent showing at the Sill House Gallery, Earl Grenville Killeen, an accomplished artist who has been a major supporter of the Future Choices competition, along with Shoreline Arts Alliance, and other arts programs, said he was so impressed by the quality of work on display. “I’m blown away by this every year,” he says. “I don’t know how it’s possible. It just keeps getting better and better.”

Eric Dillner, Shoreline Art Alliance’s chief executive officer, says it’s his goal to make it better by encouraging more schools to participate. He plans to hold an event in October to continue to spread the word about the contest among those who are connected with high school art’s programs. He can be reached at eric@shorelinearts.org, and more information about Future Choices, along with Shoreline Arts Alliance and its many other arts programs is available at https://www.shorelinearts.org/.

The students who received awards in the most recent competition were all grateful for the recognition and the opportunities provided by Shoreline Arts Alliance. And, in the end, what seemed most important to them was their art work, their development as artists, and what they learned from taking part in the process of creation.

In A Cozy Corner

Grace Phaneuf of Lyme/Old Lyme High School, who garnered Best in Show, for her charcoal pencil drawing “Blank Pages,” said she was inspired by her tendency to put things off. “That’s me,” she says. “In my room. In a cozy corner beneath my bed. Procrastinating. I get stuck a lot coming up with ideas.” Still, she says, the frustration of that notwithstanding, she enjoys working on her art and finds it fun. “I enjoy the process itself of creating the work,” she says. “I didn’t expect to win.”

Aven Kellert, also from Lyme/Old Lyme High School, found the process of creating her self portrait, which took second place in the drawing category, illuminating in a variety of ways. It was part of a school assignment, and she spent almost a semester working on it, which is a long time to look at yourself, I observed. She agreed. “I had to study my features. I had to interpret them,” she says, a process that ultimately boosted her self-esteem. “A lot of people don’t like how they look in pictures, in photos,” she says. “They say, ‘I don’t look like this photo.’ But now I look at all my features as if they are art. I got to look at them in an objective way, not in comparison with other people. It was very powerful.”

Kennedy McCormick, from Lyme, took first place in printmaking for her work, “Dubious One.” And her friend Grace Phaneuf, who took Best in Show, was one of her models for her artwork. “We were in the same AP drawing class,” she says. “I’ve known her since middle school, we played softball together.” But as well as she thought she knew her friend, she got to know her on a whole different level while working with her to create this artwork. “I learned more about her and how easygoing she is,” says McCormick.

“Thump, Thump,” a sculpture of a heart by Millie Gardner of Deep River, took first place in the sculpture category, started as a project she was working on as part of her International Baccalaureate program in high school. She thought of the idea because of her interest in public health or maybe becoming a doctor. She says her goal is to find a way to ease people’s suffering, something she pondered as she created her heart. She decided, as she worked, that she had a lot to learn and that she looks forward to that learning. That learning spans from studying the body’s circulatory system and examining what is know about the the heart as an organ, along with delving into what is known about heartache and it’s relationship to mental health and spirituality. “I’m sixteen,” she says. “I don’t know what’s in my own heart. But I’m learning.”

‘I’d Want Him To Smile’

Abby Patana, also from Lyme/Old Lyme High School, took first place in digital media for her work, “Liability.” Creating this work challenged and honed her technical skills. It also required her to delve into her past, and her family’s history. Her family came her from Laos during the Vietnam war as refugees. In her work, there are golden hands clamping on to her face, twisting and distorting and supporting it. She says the hands are symbolic of family pressure, holding her up to certain expectations. They are gold because gold not only has special significance in Buddhist culture, it also played a special role in her family’s journey to the United States, as the only treasure they could bring, with everything else in the life abandoned and left behind.

She remembers hearing stories about her grandfather, with her father, then four-years old in tow, fleeing across the Mekong River. “He did not know how to swim,” she says of her grandfather. “My dad was just little at the time. As he was pulling him across, they were getting shot at.” Her dad’s cousin died. Her dad, his brothers, and other family members made it across. “Other people trying to escape with them did not get so lucky,” says Patana. “So maybe the hands are holding me down, and expectation-wise, it feels like I’m never good enough even when I try my hardest.”

She adds some of her family members don’t understand her dedication to art, and they worry that she should maybe follow a more conventional path. At the same time, the hands are trying to be supportive and loving. “I love my family,” she says. “And I know they care. But they wonder why I don’t like girlie stuff, why I don’t like to cook or clean.” But she intends to follow the path in front of her, to become a designer and illustrator in digital art. “I love my grandfather,” she adds. “If he were here today, right here, I’d want him to smile.”

A Kinder World Through Art

Paige Lee, of Deep River, took a first place in painting for her work “Subadat,” of a young child from Nigeria who she paired with as part of the Memory Project, which endeavors to “create a kinder world through art.” Lee has been communicating with Subadat, a nine year old who loves the color pink and who wants to become a doctor. “After this show, I will send this to her, and they will send me a video of her receiving it,” says Lee. Some of her classmates have already received their videos and Lee says they are the cutest things she has ever seen. Some of them left her in tears they were so touching. “We put our handprints on the back, so we get to touch hands,” she says.

Celia Abbott of Old Saybrook received several awards, including one for her video, “Angry Young Man,” which was inspired by a Billy Joel song that she became “obsessed with,” she says, because “it tells a story by itself,” even just the first section of instrumentals. She listened to the song on vinyl, over and over again, and “saw this scene in her head,” which she then shot with the help of her theater group at Sacred Heart and Notre Dame high schools, along with her friends Cassandra and Natalie. “Art is the biggest part of my life,” she says. “Being a story teller just runs in my family. Being able to do this is just the best.”

Roberts, the student at Valley Regional High School who won the award for “Overwatered,” and had two other works on display, agreed. She says her artwork allows her to work through and share experiences that have had a big emotional impact upon her. One of her other works, “Time Goes On,” reveals a tiny mouse and the writing on the painting is expressed in Elder Futhark runes, writing used in Northern Europe beginning around 200 AD. “I thought it was cool, so I learned it,” she says. The painting itself tells a simple story about a mouse who sits by the door, and just does work. And nothing else. “I did it during a school year that was very stressful. And time just passed me by as I sat focused on my work,” she says.

The third work by Roberts was inspired by her fear of growing old and death. “I was afraid of getting old,” she says. She worried in particular about a relative who was growing old and suffering, someone “who doesn’t have a good life.” And then Roberts realized it did not have to be that way, that she could perhaps grow old while walking in the woods, and maybe eventually be buried in the woods. The words painted on and around that work of art are lyrics to a song she wrote, lyrics that show how she eventually grew to accept the inevitability of growing old and dying in a way she could accept. The lyrics talk about her being laid down in a linen dress with pockets filled with seeds, beneath a mountainside where flowers will grow in the spring. “It’s my time,” she writes. “I’ve lived a good life.” She adds that Great Pines tower over her. “And the forest has come to keep me safe.”