Local Bay View Student-Artist Awarded Nation’s Preeminent Teen Visual Arts Prize

East Providence, R.I. - St. Mary Academy – Bay View is very pleased to announce that Lindsey Williams ’23 (Riverside) has been awarded Scholastic Art & Writing Award, in the national competition. This prestigious distinction sees her join the ranks of notable Scholastic Award alumni, including Tschabalala Self, Stephen King, Kay WalkingStick, Charles White, Joyce Carol Oates and Andy Warhol—all of whom won medals when they were teens.

Ms. Williams was awarded a Gold Medal for her abstract sculpture “Trapped,” created under the direction of Visual Arts teacher Jean Petisce-Lynch (Seekonk, Mass.). Ms. Williams also received a coveted American Visions Medal, which is given to just one artist from each region.

The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, established in 1923, saw more than 110,000 students submit nearly 320,000 works of art and writing this year, and National Medal recipients were selected by some of the foremost leaders in the visual and literary arts for excellence in originality, technical skill and the emergence of a personal voice or vision. Of these 320,000 submissions, only 3,000 works received a National Medal, which places Williams within the top 1% of all submissions.

As a Gold Medal recipient, Ms. Williams and her parents will be invited to the National Awards Ceremony, held in New York City in June, and her work will be included in an online gallery (posted in June). Her piece will also travel with the National Scholastic Art Show for the next two years.

“I couldn’t be more proud of Lindsey and the entire Visual Arts Department, which has fostered the creativity of National Medal recipients for four of the last five years,” said Upper School Principal Colleen Gribbin. “Bay View’s visual arts faculty offer outstanding instruction to student-artists of all levels, and they thoroughly prepare those who chose to study art more intensively for the next steps on their path, which for many of our young women is undergraduate study at art school. Bay View’s Visual Arts program is a hidden gem and an important part of our STEAM curriculum.”