Nathan Yang and Esther Sun were both awarded the highest honor in the 2021 Scholastic Awards: the Gold Medal Portfolio Award! Keep reading to learn more about them and to view some of their winning works.

Nathan’s dedication to protecting the environment is shown through his intricate drawings of environmental issues. He believes that “art has the ability to show a new perspective to problems and help people connect to issues in a unique way.” Esther uses the chaconne—a musical form from the Baroque era—as inspiration for her writing. “[T]hemes of grief, frustration, and powerlessness” appear and reappear in Esther’s writing, just like “the chaconne brings central themes back again and again.”

Nathan Yang

“Creativity for me is a way to solve a problem by conveying my emotions and thoughts, and my means of expression are through my drawings, which exaggerate environmental issues. As part of the younger generation, I see the direct consequences of environmental misuse, and I am dedicated to protecting our ecosystems. I communicate this through my art by drawing on environmental issues, such as pollution, effects of technology, consumerism, and radioactive waste, as a way to voice my opinions on this topic . . . Looking for a new project to start on, I came across the topic of consumerism and how all goods we buy are from nature and used without much thought . . . Using art to enlighten others on environmental issues and conservation efforts in the face of increasing human population and exploitation of natural resources is the theme I choose to express myself through art.”

Esther Sun

“Like the main harmonic progression of the chaconne, grief returns in multitudes, in intervals, months and years after we think we’ve moved on. It reappears in different colors and textures, but always remains the same in essence . . . On the other hand, injustice also recurs in a similar way as the chaconne: variations on a theme. Whether it’s racism, human rights abuses, or other forms of oppression, injustice is repetitive in that most instances of it are ultimately variations on the common theme of disregard for human dignity. The poems in this portfolio encapsulate my struggles with both the large-scale injustices I feel powerless over, abroad and at home, as well as the discriminatory injustices that personally affect me . . . In general, I see every piece of music as a kind of poem in its own way, with character and a life of its own, and every poem as also a kind of musical composition. As a collection of elegies, I want Chaconne Physics to embody that blurred boundary between music and verse, as well as the power of poetry in helping us confront our grief before we begin healing.”

Chaconne Physics

Esther Sun, Poetry. Grade 12, Los Gatos High School, Los Gatos, CA. Gold Medal Portfolio, The New York Times Writing Portfolio

         for my grandfather

It is summer again and I am waiting
for the notes of my broken chords
to finally wash into each other—
each perfect third an imagined duet,

violin resurrection. You were a ripe orange
waiting to fall, then a space of matted grass.
I am alone, wishing I could have changed
your lymphatic trajectory, thinking

Bach might understand. Once I believed
in music as an art, but in this house
of white walls and windows, angular sky
and lone orange tree, I believe in it more

        as a work of physics: rhythm
of the free-body beat diagramming grief
like a swan song. So I sink into the science
of it all—the planes through which my bow

travels and travels,
measuring the left-behind hours.

Featured image: Nathan Yang, What are you thinking, Nathan?, Mixed Media. Grade 12, Loyola High School of Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA. Gold Medal Portfolio, Blick Art Material & Utrecht Art Supplies Art Portfolio

To see more Gold Medal Portfolio recipients, past and present, visit our Eyes on the Prize series.