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 2024 Gold Medal Portfolio recipients. Next, we’re highlighting Avery Davis-Fehr and Kashvi Ramani!

Avery Davis-Fehr

Cora Bidwell Art Portfolio Award 

[My] Portfolio consists of my first block prints, from a mono print to 4 layer reduction prints. I experimented with color and layering using multiple blocks in my small distractions print. Connecting my prints together as well as these being my first prints is the theme of the Midwest through the eyes f a teen who grew up there, exploring loneliness, loss, people’s views of me, and how growing up here has affected me. While having some more serious topics that I based my prints on, I also have some ones with a more humorous meaning, such as Joey being inspired by Midwest emo indie photography and the types of things teen get up to in order to stave off boredom. Through the experience of trying block printing for the first time and falling madly in love, the rush I felt when I printed the second layer of Midwest lonely as it was my first reduction print was something I’ll never forget. Seeing the image begin to form, your artistic and manual work pay off is why I print and why I made this portfolio as a homage to my first prints and their effect on my artistic journey and experience.

Kashvi Ramani

Dav Pilkey Writing Portfolio Award  

American media often warps the perception of Indians, especially in movies and T.V. shows, perpetuating stereotypical expectations that taint the image of Indian individuals for the American public. Rather than allow such a belief to continue to circulate, [my portfolio] confronts the core of Indian culture, good and bad. It tackles the difficulties Indian women face every day, unbeknownst to the American public. It showcases Indian culture as something to be celebrated and recognized as beautiful rather than regarded at face value. Finally, it offers a close look into the life of an Indian teenage girl living in a white society, struggling to stay afloat.

blending

tiny not-quite pink fingers
feel tiny pin pricks
when the colors tattoo my hand

a little less brown than henna
a little too bright to be the blood i remember

the kind that blends enough into the background for bribed eyes to glaze over injustice
the kind that stains a heart like it stained
my hands

…

tiny toes
tip
tip
tip
reaching for the flighty faucet

layers of crusted paint melt away under the waterfall

my teacher helps to peel back the rainbow she keeps peeling when there’s
no color left

to rinse

blood turns brown when it has marinated too long
that’s the color my hands are
stained

everyone else sees it too

the whispers are tiny at first

…

…

tiny eyes peer through

shadowed lenses

blurred spots dance across my vision

white
white
white

a hint of paint in my peripheral

tiny tear droplets coat thick black lashes

blood bond
blood ties
enough brown to

blend us back into the background

…

tiny names become tinier

shortened on attendance

lists
of green card beggars

and the line lengthens …

years later i collect

growing secrets spilled onto a canvas

runny and
scalding like the ‘chai tea’
they’ve made

theirs

bloody history is wrapped
in the folds of kajal (smeared

like everyone else’s)

my hands search for water
scrubbing until the colors blend into each other

and fade to white

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