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Art work by three Coon Rapids High School students has been chosen to advance to national competition.

Tiffany Castor, Katie Heikkila and Nick Miller earned the top honor, a Gold Key award, in the 2009-2010 Minnesota Scholastic Art Award program to qualify for national competition in New York City later this year.

Castor won a Gold Key for her computer generated art, while Heikkila and Miller both earned a Gold Key for their ceramic teapot entries, Miller also achieving a best in show honor.

The three Coon Rapids High School students were among 53 Gold Key winners chosen from 1,151 individual art work entries.

In addition, three Coon Rapids students won Silver Key awards for their entries.

Kelly Ernst earned a Silver Key for her drawing, “Still Life with a French Horn,” and Ashley Jacobsen for her ceramic vase, “It is all About the Strips,” while Alyssa Steinke won two Silver Key awards, one for her ceramic teapot, “Teapot in the Round,” and the other for her portfolio of eight works of art, one of only 18 Silver Key portfolio awards in the state from a field of 161 entries.

“We had a very good haul for one year,” said Sarah Hjelmberg, Coon Rapids High School art teacher.

The art work entered was done as class assignments and many of them were the culmination of the advance placement (AP) class, according to Hjelmberg.

Heikkila and Miller both won their Gold Key with ceramic teapot entries using the Chinese Yixing teapot style by Hjelmberg.

Heikkila created her ceramic teapot, called “Falling Blocks of Water,” from a series of blocks with water depicted flowing over them. “It was very visual,” Hjelmberg said.

Miller’s slab-built ceramic teapot, titled “5.3 Liter,” was designed like an engine with “pistons” hanging out from the side on which teacups could be placed, he said.

“Nick’s was a unique looking teapot,” Hjelmberg said.

Heikkila has been taking art for two years at the high school, but is planning a career in veterinary medical care after college, while Miller is planning to go to college to take a liberal arts degree, but is undecided about a major.

Castor’s Gold Key award winning computer generated art involved taking a picture of an old French town she had found on Google, she said.

The picture had dark scenery of flowers and skeleton hands, and through the use of PhotoShop, she made it even darker with lots of layers and images to create what she called a ghostly effect, according to Castor.

“I wanted to give it an ominous feel,” Castor said.

Creating the image that she wanted took Castor some time, she said.

In fact, she did the computer generation process four times before “it looked right,” Castor said.

Like Heikkila and Miller, Castor is a senior and planning to go to college, the University of Minnesota Morris, but is undecided on her major.

While Steinke did not win a Gold Key award for her portfolio, Hjelmberg said it was a major achievement to earn a Silver Key, one of only 18 awarded from portfolio entries, because of the amount of work that went into the project.

According to Steinke, her portfolio comprised eight pieces of art, specifically ceramic plates, centered around a basic idea, in her case, Idioms.

Each plate had a difference idiom, some transcribed on the plate and the rest through visualization, Steinke said.

Idioms that Steinke used in her project included “Never bite the hand that feeds you,” “Bad workers blame their tools,” “Pull the plug,” “Don’t make mountains out of molehills,” “Put a sock in it,” “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link,” “Idle hands are the devil’s tools” and “Fighting tooth and nail.”

Steinke has been taking art classes at CRHS since ninth grade and in fact, she has been taking art courses in District 11 schools “every year she could,” she said.

A senior, she is planning a career as a ceramics teacher, but is undecided at this time between two colleges where she will major in technology with a minor in art, Steinke said.

A Gold Key is an award of excellence, while a Silver Key is an award for highest honors.

The Gold and Silver Key winning entries are now on exhibit at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCDA) through Feb. 21 in the Minnesota Scholastic Art Exhibition. There will be an awards ceremony hosted by the Minneapolis College of Art and Design Sunday, Feb. 21 in the MCDA Auditorium.

Honorable mention merit awards were also given as part of the competition. Coon Rapids High School student Adriana Lere earned a merit award for her series of wheel bowls called “New Beginnings.”

The Minnesota Scholastic Art Awards program is a statewide regional affiliation of the national Scholastic Art Awards program, which offers early recognition of creative teens and scholarship opportunities for graduating high school seniors.

The program is open to all Minnesota students in grades seven through 12.

Judges select the art work to receive awards from digital images. Originality, technical skill and emergence of a personal vision are the criteria used.

Digital images of the state Gold Key art work are sent to New York City to be judged with other regional winners.

This takes place in March and if selected for the national exhibition, students and teachers are asked to ship the physical art work to the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers in New York in April for exhibition at the National Gold Awards and National American Visions and Voices Awards exhibition at the National Art Gallery in June in New York City.

Peter Bodley is at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it