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Nipmuc Senior Wins National Art Award

By Melissa Madden Staff Reporter · April 01, 2011

Nipmuc Regional High School senior Hannah Connolly wrote and illustrated a children's book, which won a gold key in the Boston Globe Scholastic Art Competition and a National Gold Medal.



Last year when Hannah Connolly was a junior at Nipmuc she took an illustration class. In this class she wrote a children's book entitled Sally Carol's Adventure, about a little girl who took a box her parent's refrigerator came in and transformed it into a plane. Once inside this "pretend plane" the main character goes on great adventures all over the country using her imagination. Modeled on her own life, Hannah said she used to take boxes and pretend they were airplanes when she was a child and this served as her inspiration for the book.

Hannah completed Sally Carol's Adventure in April 2010 and entered it into The 2011 Boston Globe Scholastic Art Competition during her senior year. Judges at The Boston Globe Scholastic Art Competition liked Hannah's book so much that she was awarded a Gold Key for the Massachusetts contest and since her illustrations were considered "Best of Show" for the region she was named an American Visions & Voices Nominee and entered into the national American Visions Awards.

Hannah won the National Gold Medal for one of the most outstanding works in the nation. The medal will be presented to her at Carnegie Hall in New York on May 31 during the national awards ceremony and celebration.

The Scholastic Art Awards competition, founded in 1923, is considered to be one of the most prestigious student art competitions at the state and national levels. The parent sponsor for this competition is The Alliance for Young Artists & Writers that celebrates the creative achievement of America's teens. Students who excel in the visual arts and creative writing participate in The Awards to earn recognition, get their work exhibited or published and to earn scholarships. This year almost 12,000 images were submitted statewide in the various media categories created by over 6,000 individual students.

Student artworks that are submitted by art teachers compete for Honorable Mention, Silver Key, Gold Key and Portfolio Nominee awards.

Studying art since she was in eighth grade, Hannah is now part of the AP Art program at Nipmuc. Following her graduation from Nipmuc this spring, Hannah will continue to study illustration at Montserrat in Beverly next year.

Her artwork and that of other Nipmuc students who received Massachusetts Gold Key and Silver Key awards are part of an exhibition that is currently on display in the State Transportation Building at 10 Park Plaza in downtown Boston through Thursday, April 7. The students received their Gold Key and Silver Key Awards at a ceremony in Boston on March 6.

As a national winner, Hannah's book will be part of The 2011 National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards Exhibition in New York City in June, that will showcase about 300 works of art and more that 50 works of writing.

Congratulations to Hannah and the other Nipmuc Regional High School students who were recognized for their work at The 2011 Boston Globe Scholastic Art Competition. They are: Gold Key: Laura Ng Painting, and Hannah Connolly Comic Art; Silver Key: Eric Brodeur Photography, Grace Thompson Drawing and Skylar Griswold Drawing; plus Honorable Mention: Lindsey Healey Comic Art; Melanie Kossuth Painting; Ryan Kelley Architecture; Heather Pilkington Design and Celia Taylor Painting.