It’s Official: Katie Miller Is An Award-Winning Artist

By Shannon Hicks

Katie Miller of Newtown can add another credit to her portfolio before heading off to college in the fall. The 17-year-old may now officially put the words “award-winning artist” in front of her name.

Miss Miller has been named the grand prize winner of the 2001 Art Scholarship Juried Exhibition sponsored by and presented at Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield. The announcement was made during the opening reception and awards ceremony for the annual exhibit on Sunday, April 29.

The prize, an art scholarship award, is valued at $1,000. Miss Miller is a senior at Newtown High School and at ACES Educational Center for the Arts (ECA), an interdistrict magnet school in New Haven for students who are talented in the visual, literary, and performing arts. She will begin attending Pratt Institute in the fall.

Eleven additional prizes were awarded during the ceremony to high school seniors residing in Fairfield County, Connecticut, as well as entries from Westchester County, N.Y.

“2001 Art Scholarship Juried Exhibition” will remain on view until May 13 at the museum, which is at 258 Main Street in Ridgefield (telephone 203-438-4519). The work of over 100 artists from 26 high schools is being presented in this year’s exhibition.

“This means that out of 110 other seniors in high school, Katie’s was considered the most outstanding work in the exhibition,” Aldrich curator of education Nina Carlson spelled out this week.

Miss Miller’s entry is a diptych, two drawings combined as one work entitled “Untitled.” Ms Carlson described the piece as two black-and-white drawings involving text and a figure drawing of a female. The work measures approximately 11 by 34 inches. A label announcing the work as the grand prize winner has been placed on the wall next to “Untitled.”

“It’s very abstract, with gestural lines,” Ms Carlson said this week. “I think Katie’s work shows a lot of talent in her lines. She has a very mature sensitivity towards her subject, and she explores a very traditional subject matter in a very unique and unexpected way,” the curator continued.

The annual juried exhibition is a continuing effort – one of many year-round undertakings by the museum – by the Aldrich to celebrate the achievements of young artists from the two counties closest to the museum’s setting. The competition is open to all high school seniors enrolled in art courses during the time entries are due, to students interested in pursuing art after graduation.

A panel of art professionals reviews all submissions, and the final selections are then exhibited at the museum. Cash awards are presented for some categories, including the $1,000 grand prize art scholarship for achievement in painting, sculpture, mixed media, video, or digital art. In-kind awards are also presented as honorable mentions.

This year’s applications deadline was April 18. Artwork was delivered to the museum on April 26, then installed the following day. Judging began immediately, as soon as the work began to be installed.

This year’s panel of jurors comprised five professionals from the art world. Jurors were Richard Klein, the assistant director and curator of Aldrich Museum; Christine Alexaides, a ceramic artist and adjunct professor at Southern Connecticut State University; Rick Longo, the director of admissions at School of Visual Arts in New York; artist Bob Knox, whose work has appeared in such Aldrich exhibitions as “Best of Season”; and digital artist Claire Corey, whose pieces were included in last fall’s Aldrich exhibition “Ink Jet.”

When assessing the artwork prior to the opening reception, the identity of the artists is kept from the judges. Artists’ names are hidden, as are any identifying characters or signatures on the pieces themselves, according to Ms Carlson. Once the judging is complete, the results are held from the public and the entrants until the time of the reception, but the museum staff sometimes learns the results beforehand.

“We knew Friday afternoon who the winners were,” Ms Carlson said Tuesday afternoon, “and I had class with Katie that afternoon and couldn’t tell her.

“It was a great feeling giving her the award, though,” she added. “All the anticipation builds up while we’re giving away the other 11 awards, and then Katie’s name was called. It was wonderful.”

Judges’ comments concerning the Miller piece called it “a mature investigation, a good combination of observation, drawing and imagination” … “it has an exciting figure-to-ground relationship” … [and] “it was open-ended; [we feel like we can] talk about it for hours.”

Katie has been participating in the Aldrich’s Art Lab program for two years, since its inception. The intensive program is designed for juniors and seniors in high school who intend to pursue a career in the visual arts. Last summer she also attended the Center for Creative Youth (CCY). CCY is a pre-college summer program at Wesleyan University that offers artistically advanced high school students five weeks of intensive study at one of the country’s most distinguished liberal arts colleges.

 “I think her hard work has definitely paid off, and she certainly deserves the award,” Ms Carlson said in conclusion.