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, skill, and the emergence of a personal vision or voice. These remarkable artists and writers will each receive a $12,500 scholarship.
For the next few weeks, we’ll be profiling the 2023 Gold Medal Portfolio recipients. Next up are Sophia Fratta and Maya Dabney.
Sophia Fratta
Throughout my portfolio, I tried to approach environmentalism indirectly: by celebrating the world we live in—such as through whale falls, an intricate regenerative process that begins where life ends—and by confronting ecological problems in a people-centered, empathetic way, like the story of Colombia’s rural farmers. In an effort to make science writing enjoyable and interesting, I drew inspiration from many accomplished authors, from Mary Oliver to Plato. By finding humor in “dry” topics and highlighting the personal in systemic issues, I hope to provide a convincing and compassionate case for our planet’s future.
Hello Again, Trieste
POETRY
Sophia Fratta, Grade 12, Home School, Chapel Hill, NC. Ana Carina Cruz, Jamie Zvirzdin, Educators. The Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, Affiliate. Gold Medal Portfolio Award, The New York Times Writing Portfolio Award
After the first recorded whale fall, 1977
We say goodbye, lying.
Still there might be
a moment of sadness at her turning—
the great blue wash of her fin
a fading wave.
Sunset over the spreading sea.
Time melts—
the black pool of her eye
opening wide,
dripping into the beckoning deep:
drift
dizzy fall
sweet kiss of hagfish and
sleeper shark
tearing her bruised plum body.
A seed dropping like a stone.
On this the barren planet of
the seafloor
Her bones bloom,
Bristle worms making a home
in her ribs.
If she had a heart
they would let it rot,
too enamored with her rib cage
to pay it mind—
her brittle-edged bones
home, hearth, and harvest.
But who is she, great blue mother,
to the unimaginably small?
A grain of sand
eats at her with less indifference—
the equalizing embrace of
bacterial mats
consuming her lipids, her sulfides
for limpet shells
and clam teeth.
Crumbled and granulated at last.
We say hello again, Trieste,
see her face in every snail shell,
in every glint of fish scale
in the froth off every wave
that rolls over her great blue.
Maya Dabney
My portfolio, When They See Us, is a body of work drawing attention to the plight of African-Americans beyond the hashtags. It connects present calls for justice to those it echoes from the past. One of the questions that flew through my mind while working on these pieces was “Why focus on the negative?” My answer came with time: As someone in a community that has experienced injustice after injustice for so long, I often see how easy it is for people to write it off, reasoning that if they don’t personally experience it or see it, it must not be an issue. The worst of it is when I or my peers attempt to bring up the past treatment of African-Americans to contextualize current events, we’re met with a blunt response: Get over it. This pattern of dismissal is why I want to focus on the harsh reality many African-Americans face in this nation. My portfolio acts as a window into that reality; I don’t want people to hear, I want people to see.
Featured image: Maya Dabney, Give Us a Show, Mixed Media. Grade 12, Lake Norman Charter High School, Huntersville, NC. Cara Matocha, Educator; University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Affiliate. Gold Medal Portfolio, New York Life Art Portfolio
To see more Gold Medal Portfolio recipients, past and present, visit our Eyes on the Prize series.