A Gold Medal Portfolio Award is the highest honor students can receive in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Jurors choose portfolios by high school seniors whose works best represent the Scholastic Awards’ judging criteria: originality, technical skill, and the emergence of a personal vision or voice. These remarkable artists and writers will each receive a $10,000 scholarship.

For the next few weeks, we’ll be profiling the 2022 Gold Medal Portfolio recipients. Next up are Dakota Ouellette and Andrew Palmer.

Dakota Ouellette

The overall theme of my portfolio is the complex nature that I have not only with my body and mind, but we as a human race have with our bodies and minds as a whole. I am hoping to bring awareness to the topics presented in this portfolio and to be a relatable voice for readers.

Wings

POETRY

Dakota Ouellette, Grade 12, Rockville High School, Vernon, CT. Gold Medal Portfolio, Alliance for Young Artists & Writers Writing Portfolio Award

The grace of a bird’s feathers emerges from a green speckled egg. 
Innocence is tucked beneath her wings. 

The universe claims to care for all its creations. 
But this baby bird was hatched into a world with a sun crafted from stone. 

Tumbling to the ground. 
Scuffing her wings with dirt before she could learn how to fly. 

The pack caught a whiff of her scent. 
Chastity, it smells so saccharine to the hounds. 

Bird—
battered, bloodied & bruised. 
Dogs—
starving, sinister & soulless. 

It didn’t take them too long to crave the taste of her skin.
Hitting her wasn’t gratifying enough. 

They had to go in deeper, into a hole they didn’t dig.  
Claws sink in as they extract her purity out. 

Pins her legs in place. 
Rips off the delicate feathers that once protected her body in a cozy hug. 

This was not a game between birds and bees. 
This was a war between predator and prey. 

Marked her body as their new territory.
Taught her to make a welcome mat out of her skin.

No longer spreading her wings. 
Only knowing how to open her legs. 

This carcass is violated, haunted by a first experience she’ll never forget. 
She’ll forever be a visitor in her own home.

Andrew Palmer

During my lifetime I’ve seen my community portrayed negatively on social media and news.

My pieces are made to counteract these images portrayed in the news and on social media; my goal is to present blackness as grand and regal. I place my portraits in frames to give a sense of grandeur, in the tradition that began during the Renaissance when frames were used to indicate status and wealth.

Featured images: Andrew Palmer, Lena and Cam, Painting. Grade 12, Henrico High School Center
for the Arts, Richmond, VA. Gold Medal Portfolio, Alliance for Young Artists & Writers Art Portfolio Award

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