Each year, Hill School students are given the opportunity to participate in the Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards. This year, a total of 20 Hill students received Gold Keys, Silver Keys, and Honorable Mentions. Dr. Mark Pearson, the faculty member overseeing the program, was impressed with how well students did. “This year 12 students were recognized in the writing portion, which is the second best we have had in the six years of me being here. In 2021 we had 20 students recognized.” 

The program began in 1923 to recognize students who create prestigious art and writing pieces for students in grades 7th-12th. When a student receives a Gold Key, they are automatically considered for national-level recognition. According to the Everhart Museum website, “Jurors select work for national recognition based on three criteria: originality, technical skill, and emergence of a personal vision or voice.” 

A total of 20 Hill students participated in the program and won numerous rewards. Five Gold Keys, nine Silver Keys, and 14 Honorable Mentions were awarded for writing. The art portion held seven Gold Keys, nine Silver Keys, and 14 Honorable Mentions. The Hill School is a part of the Philadelphia Region, which is highly competitive. “It is truly a prestigious contest, and it was fascinating seeing the students I taught grow,” Pearson said.  

Vicky Xiao ‘24 won a Silver Key in poetry. “The poetry was meant to present the fact that sometimes people do not get to say goodbye to friends and family and that can have a hard effect on people,” she said in a Zoom interview. For Xiao, creating this piece came naturally. She found it enjoyable because of the rhyming and meaning behind it. 

Hill News Features Editor Anna Carroll ‘23 entered a poem and short story, which both received Gold Keys. The poem she entered was originally a sonnet for her humanities class here at the Hill. “I ended up liking the sonnet I wrote because it was about my faith,” Carroll said. 

When submitting her short story, Carroll was considering doing a novel instead. “One of my goals iis to write a book. I have started outlining, but finding the time is hard,” she explained. 

Carroll ended up taking chapters she already had and began writing them as a short story. When asked why this work was so meaningful to her, she shared how her faith plays a huge role in it. “My faith is meaningful to me, so talking about it in writing is something that is personal and touching to me.”

Adelyn Sim ‘24 received two Silver Keys and three Honorable Mentions; four of these five pieces were part of her studio art class, while the fifth one was from an H-Term independent study. “Focusing on the still life piece I drew in studio art, I used both a pencil and mechanical pencil to draw. The challenging part was that the piece was quite big, so I had to put a lot of time and effort in order to finish,” she explained. In addition, the class helped Sim select some gypsum models in the studio and arrange them in different ways. “I thought it would be interesting if I chose eye and lip block and located them on top of each other, so they appear as a face but in a unique placement,” Sim stated in a text. 

Fourth former Cici Fang’s art piece was inspired by her trip to a conservancy in Kenya two years ago: “I went there for a project to protect rhinos. It was the first time in my life to know that some species of rhinos, which I thought were as common as any other animals in the zoo, were critically endangered and almost extinct.” After the trip she noticed many of her peers spread information about rhinos and what others could do to help them. This is what truly inspired Fang to create artwork centered around rhinos. “In the poster, the last two female white northern rhinos were hidden behind in the shadow of the poacher. The poacher was looking for more horns in which he could only see ‘most’ out of ‘almost extinct’ on the ground,” Fang said. 

A piece of art many students may recognize is “Pork Belly,” an illustration created by Angela Jin ‘24. The newspaper behind the pork is The Hill News’ first issue of the school year. “I got the reference image of the pork from my father in China, who spent quite some time searching for a unique piece of meat at the butcher shop,” Jin said. 

Although pork and newspapers are not customarily associated, Jin thought it would be a nice clash between them. To create such a piece was tedious for Jin, but she stated she felt it paid off in the end. “There would even be times when I would get irritated and just wanted to finish the paintings. However, the feeling of accomplishment after finishing each piece was greatly rewarding, so I felt the hard work had paid off.”