By Heather Bell
RADFORD – Radford High School student Trent Hollandsworth has been awarded a national medal in the 2022 Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, the country’s longest-running and most prestigious scholarship and recognition program for creative students in grades 7–12.
Hollandsworth, a ninth grader, won the award for his oil painting “Lonely Crowds.”
“More than 100,000 students submitted more than 260,000 works of art and writing to the 2022 Scholastic Awards,” said RHS art teacher Savannah Leeman. “Fewer than 2,000 works received a national medal, which places Trent within the top one percent of all submissions.”
Hollandsworth has been invited to Carnegie Hall in June to participate in the National Awards Ceremony and to attend art workshops led by professional artists.
“We honor hundreds of students and their educators with a star-studded ceremony in New York City,” said the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers, the nonprofit organization that sponsors the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards.
Recent special guests include Oprah Winfrey, Tim Gunn, Alec Baldwin, Sonia Manzano, Tituss Burgess, Amy Schumer, Billy Collins, Whoopi Goldberg, and Sarah Jessica Parker.
“Entries are selected for awards without knowledge of the student’s gender, age, ethnicity, or hometown by some of the foremost leaders in the visual and literary arts,” the alliance explains on its website.
The Fine Arts Center of the New River Valley serves as the affiliate partner for the Scholastic Art Awards for the Southwest Region. Hollandsworth won a Gold Key Award at the regional exhibition to advance to the national level. In addition to Hollandsworth, two other Radford High School students were chosen for awards regionally. Maggie Bolling won a Gold Key Award for her mixed media piece “Mushrooms,” and Sienna Carter won an honorable mention for her “Young Skelly” mixed-media piece. Bolling and Carter are John Dalton Intermediate School eighth graders.
National medalists are eligible for scholarships as much as $10,000. The awards, which were founded in 1923, recognize student achievement in the visual and literary arts in 28 categories, including drawing and illustration, photography, flash fiction, poetry, film and animation, and journalism.
