By Mario Carr EBS CONTRIBUTOR
Elise Daugherty, a sophomore at Lone Peak High School, was taking photos in fall of 2023 when she came upon some lichen covered rocks. She photographed them.
“I like moss, mushrooms, and lichen; they are so cool!” Daugherty wrote in an email to EBS about her award-winning photo.
Daugherty’s piece is titled “Are You Lichen It?” and she said that she chose that name due to her love of “dad jokes.” Her art teacher, Kate Riley, suggested that she enter the photo into a competition a couple of months after she took it, and Daugherty couldn’t pass up the opportunity.
Students all around the country in grades seven through 12 can submit their best work to the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. When considering the art that is submitted, the organization focuses on originality, skill and the emergence of personal voice from the art. After obtaining a regional Golden Key Award, students are then eligible to submit up to five works to be nominated for the American Visions or American Voices awards.
“The Regional Gold Key Award means so much to me, and I am honestly surprised that I got it,” Daugherty said. After taking her photo she said that she only slightly edited it for contrast, and sent it in to the competition.
“I am so proud of her, this is our District’s first time winning a National Scholastic Gold Key Award for Art. This prestigious award that started in the 1920s has been won by artists like Andy Warhol when he was only 17, Robert Indiana and John Baldassari, just to name a few,” Riley said.
Riley is hopeful that having this award will open doors for her students in the future. Daugherty is a well-rounded art student that has also made some paintings that her teacher finds fascinating. Riley says that Daugherty plans to continue submitting art pieces for the next two years while at LPHS, and Riley is also excited about how the arts are growing there.
Riley has been teaching at Lone Peak for two years now and has always encouraged her students to submit their pieces for these kinds of competitions. Daugherty and more than a dozen other students will be enrolled in the school’s higher-level, two-year International Baccalaureate art course next year, a course that has more than doubled in size since Riley joined the school district. Riley is hopeful that Daugherty’s success will encourage others in the school to continue pursuing their art goals. Daugherty’s passion for art has grown greatly with just two entry-level art courses, and her teacher is excited for what this IB art course is going to do for her students by allowing them more time to dive deep into all things art.
“The National Scholastic Gold Key awards have a pretty incredible history of talented artists and writers, I don’t know if students always understand the magnitude of winning a Gold Key award,” Riley said.
