First Place ($1,500): The Penny Man
“A man in a trench coat stands across from a church at night. In his inner pocket there are thirty pennies; each one had been minted a year after the one before it, going back to 1986. He was four when he got his first one, and had made sure to find a newly minted penny once every year since. The pennies, and the odd way in which he collected them, were irrelevant to his mission, as they were irrelevant to almost everything, but he always had them because one of the few things they weren’t irrelevant to were his memories. ”
The first place winner for the 2016-2017 Caffrey Welles Fine Arts award was Meghan Cook with her novella "The Penny Man". The tumblr page that holds the full text of the novella can be found here. A formatted word document of the novella can be downloaded here.
Second Place ($500): Tiara Penna's Online Gallery
Syndia Perez won third place with her Vasto Lorde Mask. Details on building the mask can be found here.
Fourth Place ($200): Elsa Romero's Online Gallery
Elsa Romero won fourth place with her online gallery. A link to her works can be found here.
Fifth Place ($125): Gabrielle Nichols' Online Gallery
Earning participation Awards for this years Arts award were Madison Dulis for her collection of poetry found here, Erin Cook for her online gallery found here, Ameila Hammond for her indoor wilderness project found here, Anthony Elms for his online gallery found here, Ladya Bellinda for her artwork found here, Patrick Franckiewicz for his photography found here, Stanley Kwok for his short story found here and Fabiola Flores for her online gallery found here.
Speech Given at the Awards Ceremony:
Mia spoke during the Awards ceremony about how influential both Mr Welles and Mrs Caffrey were and about farts. The transcript of her speech is below:
Hello, everyone. Thank you, Adam, and thank you to Meyers High School for allowing us to present the Caffrey Welles Fine Arts award today. So, what's this award all about? How is it different from the other very many awards you awesome students are getting? Let's break it down. Caffrey Welles Fine Arts Award.
Well, unsurprisingly, the Caffrey part of this award honors Ms. Mollie Caffrey. Where is she? There she is, can we please give her a round of applause? A lot of you might be like "ohhh that's that lady's name, I never knew it..” Because she teaches 12th grade English and ATP, so most of you haven't had her. You might also be thinking "okay why did this other lady ask me to clap for her?" we'll get to that in a moment.. and you might also be thinking "I'm hungry" Was I right about that? Yep…I'm in your head. So, Miss Caffrey teaches ATP and 12th grade English. She taught me and my siblings, and true story, the first day I met her, she was telling us about how the class was going to work and I was doodling on a piece of paper. I was just drawing a random person's face, but she came around my desk and said "Is that me?" and I was like “ohhh noooooo” but then I looked at it and I thought “oh man this does kind of look like I was drawing her, and oh shoot I'm not a good artist” so then it looked like I was making fun of her and I was lying about it. Anyway, the rest of the year went way better – Ms. Caffrey made the class fun by letting us dissect the interesting poems or stories - not like biology dissect, that's gross, sorry whoever teaches biology now.
Let's move on to the Welles part of this award. The Welles part honors an awesome dude who's pretty popular around these parts- Justin Beiber. Just kidding, just seeing if you're paying attention. It's Mr. Kevin Welles. His jokes are about as corny as that one, if I recall correctly. The thing I remember most from his class was not a particular lesson or research project but this inappropriate story - one day someone brought in a machine whose sole purpose- the only reason this toy existed- was to make fart noises. I don't know about you guys, but when I was in high school, the highest form of humor was a well placed fart sound. I mean, I don't think they're funny anymore, tooooootally more mature now... anyway someone brought it into the class and kept pressing the button and I'll always admire Mr. Welles for not freaking out on us that day. He laughed at it with us! He's incredibly patient and kind in his approach to teaching English. Let's have a round of applause for Mr. Welles.
So, probably the opposite of the story I just told, the Fine Arts part of this award. Fine Arts are defined as "creative art, especially visual art, whose products are to be appreciated primarily for their imaginative, aesthetic, or intellectual content." So, why are we honoring two teachers that don't even teach art with this award? Well, think about the stories I just told about them. And in Caffrey's class - I remember having a great time with my friend Kim - we had this little victory clap we did whenever we got a question right in social students trivia. (Yes, it was as annoying as it sounds, but we didn't care.) Do I remember the exact questions we got right? No. Do I remember the clap and laughing with my friend? Yes. the things we remember the most over the years are not facts you learn or quotes from famous authors - you remember the times that caused you joy, or pain, or embarrassment. Right? Think about your kindergarten class. Maybe you remember some of the lessons or books you read, but you probably remember who was in your class more than that. Welles and Caffrey are amazing teachers not because they have great lesson plans and choose content that's interesting - though those are both true - but because they structure their classes in such a way to allow students to enjoy learning and express themselves. These projects are an extension of that - it's a way do explore emotions by doing something that just sounds fun - like drawing some sick anime or painting murals on your bedroom walls or expressing yourself through poetry. The students that participated had total freedom to do whatever they wanted with the project - some people even used the F word in their writing! - don't worry, Elias, I'm not talking about farts again. All the projects elicited an emotion in the people that viewed them and while the students were creating them.
So, now we know what the Caffrey Welles Fine Arts Award is about. Thank you to the students that participated in this project. It was awesome to see the projects that you made. Thank you for bringing me joy and allowing me to share in genuinely well done pieces of art. Maybe next year someone will make their own snapchat filter for their project - we never could have done that - you heard Adam, we didn't even have cell phones. But I do hope that next year we have even more participants because - it's fun, and that's the stuff you're going to remember after you graduate when you're really old like me.
So, let's give out the awards. Everyone knows that artists make huge amounts of money, there’s no such thing as a starving artist, so in that spirit, just like the BEST award, the following unranked participants will each be getting $50. Thank you to ....
Donors Who Are Totally Awesome:
The Iseman Foundation is funded by awesome people who give their hard earned money to help encourage kids to start their journeys in fine arts. The amazing donors for this years Arts award can be found at the GoFundMe page that was set up to fund this years awards found here. Thank you so much to everyone that continues to support getting kids interested in the fine arts!