How to Deal with Art Competitions for Students

jeff zhou

How to Deal with Art Competitions for High School Students

III. The Advantages and Disadvantages of Art Contests

Written and translated by Jeff Zhou on 03/16/2017 and updated on 2/18/2021

Edited by Anushka Radadia, former president of the New Jersey Young Artists Association, and current undergraduate student in class of 2024 at University of Texas at Austin

In the previous articles, I mentioned that if we want to participate the art competitions, we especially need to be prepared to “no arrogant after victory; no complaint after defeat”. Because in this whole world it is difficult to have a common and objective criterion for judging artworks.

1.

More than thirty years ago, I read "People, Years, Life" by Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg (1891-1967). There was a famous story in the book about two Impressionist painters (Pissarro and Seurat?) who made an experiment after a discussion.

They put one of their landscape paintings on the busy street of Paris and placed a box of chalks as well as a notice on the side of the painting:

"Dear friends, please make a cross mark on the part of this painting where you don’t satisfy. Thank you."

One day later, when they went to collect the painting, they found that the picture had been filled with cross marks, as if the painting was almost invisible. “It’s terrible.” some people even left a message to suggest some ideas of improvements.

Then, the two artists erased all the cross marks on the painting. They put the same landscape oil painting back on the same spot of the street below the gallery, and still left a box of chalks on the side of the painting. But, this time, the painters changed the notice to pedestrians:

"Dear friends, please draw a circle on the most successful brushstroke on this painting. Thank you."

One day later, when they went to collect the painting, they found that the picture had been densely painted with circles by pedestrians, as if the painting suddenly appeared perfect one day later; some people even couldn’t help but left a message and offered to buy this painting.

Obviously, there is no one single fairy goddess can set a unified objective standard for art.

2.

This lack of a unified judging standard for artworks often makes art students and their educators feel very confused.

High School students are still young, and they are more likely to lack correct judgment on their own artworks. In a toothpaste problem solving design project during the design lessons of Spring 2018, student J designed a successful product which could be a perfect example in the textbook. What a pity was that he himself did not think this was a very good design which has the potential to win a top prize at the art contests. He simply did not submit this class assignment to the 2019 Scholastic Art Awards.

One year later, student C designed a kitchen safe and hygienic knife kit, which was basically the same design concept and design renderings as student J, and indeed won the 2020 Scholastic Art Awards Regional Silver Award:

The solution designed by student N to solve the phenomenon of elementary school students’ missing gloves also won the regional silver award in the 2020 Scholastic Art Awards with her classmate C:

Another result is that different artworks of the same artist who participated in art competitions in different years. One year's artwork won the prize, but the other year's better-looking artworks which has greatly improved afterwards did not.

Student R was the first president of the New Jersey Young Artists Association. In 2015, she took part in the 2015 Scholastic Art Awards for the first time with her self-portrait exercise “Nature’s Daughter-Self Portrait”, which was completed in the drawing class in her 9th grade. Easily, she won the Regional Honorable Mention Award in the Drawing and Illustration category:

In the fall of 2015, Rebecca made persistent efforts to express her beautiful youth dreams by an oil painting on canvas. The high school student spent an hour and a half of her spare time each week sitting in my studio to paint her world of happiness and appreciation, and she handled the painting gracefully. She even used the same series title of her winning artwork a year ago, "Nature’s Daughter". But she failed to receive any awards from the jury of the 2016 Scholastic Art Awards:

The progress between the two paintings after two years in terms of skills, artistic conception, and aesthetics should be obvious to all, but the actual prize results were very different.

Can it be said that in the art competition, even if we have a chance to win prize, the final result is out of our own hands? In other words, as long as we show our self-confidence, the trophy of life will never forget us: student R was finally recognized and entered her dream major, the nation's leading artificial intelligence major at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). I am so proud of her.

4.

Since art is a part of culture, the standards of art are within the subjective scope of a very individual, just like beauty itself has no standards, different cultures, different regions, different races, different ages, different periods will have different perceptions of beauty. So, why should we participate in art competitions?

It is true that participating in frequent art competitions too early will do more harm than good to children who are still in the brain development stage, and this is precisely because of the misleading from "do not lose at the starting line" thought and of some profit-making organizations in the society. Under their misleading, the art learning supposes a happy learning but then it becomes boring; the kids suppose have overwhelmingly originally imagination but then they draw out the ideas of people in their 70s or 80s. In fact, how many "prodigies" who won at the starting line have reached the finish line?

Usually, admissions offices at most universities do not care of your achievements before your high school period. Just imagine, if I used to be a child prodigy, but I did worse in my high school years. Does this mean that I have been "exhausted"?

Let’s put our thoughts in this way, when I was child, I could be proud of being a child star. But, when I was about to enter college, if I was still proud of my childhood achievement as a child start, does that mean that another "late bloomer" prospect student has more future than I have?

So, on the one hand, regarding whether students before high school want to participate in art competitions, I often advise them “to learn but not to participate". We really can't bear to let children challenge those vain things. If they have more free time, they are better to read more news, more famous biographies, and practice their independent thinking ability.

However, on the other hand, at the high school stage, selectively participating in several important art competitions is indeed one of the methods in art training. But the key point is that only when student artists and their parents have a clear understanding of the nature of art creation, and only when their mentality has become sufficiently mature and strong enough, then, participating in large-scale art competitions will benefit our young students:

1) Art Contest can foster a sense of participation

The competition activities are worked on participation. When students participate in it, they will make their own decisions for what to paint and how to express their feelings. They will strictly demand themselves in order to achieve the short-term goals of the competition, to actively prepare, to abide by the time limits and rules of the competition, and to develop an effective work habit.

2) Art Contest can cultivate fearless personality

There are art contests, there will be competition. Through competitions, students can test their own strengths, but also find their own weaknesses thereby promoting their art learning; competition activities also allow students to step out of the art studio, to face the society, and to learn different perspectives and comments which will help cultivate them to overcome their inner fears, so that the participates can dare to gradually face the public, build self-confidence, and understand themselves better!

3) Art Contest is also the best time for frustration education

Victory or defeat is a common matter for competitions. Furthermore, art is exactly a kind of creative activity without a unified standard. So how to treat your own defeat has become an art education in itself. Educate our kids about setbacks in a timely manner, tell them that the game results are only temporarily unsatisfactory which do not matter; encourage them to regroup and make a comeback. There is no better time to teach our kids to face various possible setbacks in the future.

Student A participated in the Scholastic Art Awards couple times and didn’t win. But what does it matter? Our artworks are not only just created for competitions; on the contrary, our short-term goals are often more concerned with how to improve the standards of students' portfolios as high as possible.

Same as student A, there are still many outstanding students in our graduating class of 2021. Although they have not yet received the acceptance letter from their dream university, I can immediately assert without hesitation that they will have no problem to enter the university in top of their list. Because their talents can't be stopped, and their art portfolios will glow dazzling lights to wake up the admissions officers. By the same token, among our students in the class of 2022 in the future, there will also be many such outstanding students. If they sell their "original shares" now, I will place orders immediately.

　　

4) Art Contest can also cultivate a broad mind

The art competition taught the students to appreciate the artworks of others, to eliminate jealousy, and cultivate the young artists into a generous, empathetic, and better global citizens. What troubled me the most was when I saw the students who do not want to cooperate with others. They hid and covered their own paintings. The reasons could be shyness, or worse, they feared that their ideas would be learned by other students. Anyway, neither is desirable.

Participating in the national art competitions will let the young artists realize that in such a big world, every player we meet is actually a travel companion, a member of our team, a brother or sister, who makes progress together with us, but not our opponent.

2020 was a year of disasters all over the world, the kids had a thousand reasons to stay at home and play games to relieve boredom. However, student EY and her 10th grade classmates used their summer vacation to continue their design courses. That year, we challenged the coronavirus COVID-19! That year, we also really figured out the advantages of online courses. We asked the teachers and students of the whole class to discuss and analyze each design work from the first draft to the completion on the sharing screen. No one shied away from his/her design work. The strengths, weaknesses and suggestions for improvement were discussed openly just like a team of design group in a famous design company working together to design a commissioned product.

When the results of the 2021 Scholastic Art Awards were announced, everyone went back to the sharing screen again and used the advantages of the online Zoom lesson to communicate, analyze and review the results of each submission, so that the students could truly learn the essence of art.

Student EY is one of the best students who cooperated this learning process very well. Her design project has also been revised and improved several times. Fortunately, she was meticulous and tirelessly pushing her design work to the state of perfection step by step. Finally, she once again won the Regional Honorable Mention Award in Design from 2021 Scholastic Art Awards:

In this regard, teachers also need to lead by example, eliminate jealousy, and continue to learn the strengths of other colleagues. We often encouraged our students to participate in other art classes of their respective schools and humbly followed the guidance of other art teachers; I also do not oppose students joining other art schools or art classes for training (this is a taboo in many other art schools). In fact, every one of us only needs to understand that everything we are doing is for the best future of the students. All teachers, coaches, parents and student him/herself are just team members on the same boat of that student. Therefore, the so-called teacher’s personal credit is actually not worth mentioning.

My student G is a popular ballet beauty. In addition to my art class, she also participated in the school's art class. Her paintings always float with an unstoppable artistic elegance. In 2016, she selected three paintings to participate in the 2017 Scholastic Art Awards. All three of G's paintings are very beautiful. However, even for the same type of drawing with watercolor, both G and I preferred “Reflective Distortions”. In my opinion, this painting had both the visual stunning and auditory beauty of "The Phantom of the Opera", as well as the Spartacus-like military style and dramatic tension：

Unfortunately, we were all wrong. The judges chose "Black and White Black and White" as the Honorable Mention Prize in the Drawing Illustration category...

Again, did it matter? Everyone of student G's team worked so hard together. In the end, she won numerous awards and I always think that Columbia University is lucky enough to have such an outstanding student as her!

5) Of course, there is no denying that the art contest can also bring fame for the art students, art teachers and educational institutions ...

However, in my art teaching system, there is no special class for art competitions. I think that in art education, first of all, in terms of short-term tactics, we have to combine the different personalities and abilities of each student in art education, pay attention to teaching methods according to their aptitude, their short- and medium-term curriculum planning before university admission. Our goal is to strive to help students enter their dream colleges in a limited time.

In the studio, I always encourage my students to finish their assignments with the standard of the art contest entries. By this way, they can directly use the classroom assignments to participate the art contests at an appropriate time which I called "multiple birds with one stroke", is not it?

Art contests are as if a few short stops of an art study train journey, which give our students opportunities to step out of the cabins, to stretch their bodies and to have fun on the platforms. Then, they will get back to the train again and continue to advance towards their life goals.

My student CN is a good example. She loves music and is an outstanding violinist in the famous Princeton High School Orchestra. She has performed abroad with her orchestra for many times. She started following me to study painting in the spring of 2017, when she was already in her 9th grade, with no art training before.

But from the first day I gave her lessons, I could feel the sponge-like curiosity reflected from her big eyes. Soon after some lessons, she said that she wanted to learn fashion design. So, I designed her personal art learning curriculum outline according to her graduation schedule.

In the fall of 2017, with her passion for music and fashion design, C collected thousands of broken violin strings and planned to start her first fashion design project which we hope to participate the 2018 Scholastic Art Awards. Unfortunately, the project cost too much time and she missed the deadline in the end of 2017. However, Christa had not been discouraged and she continued to work hard on her project at home.

Finally, in the very next year, her fashion design project 【Je M' Habille avec ma Musique (I Dress Myself with my Music)】won the National Fashion Design Gold Award with an absolute honor at the 2019 Scholastic Art Awards. Till today, her design project is still traveling around the United States for a contracted two-year national tour.

In the same year, C also won the silver key from 2019 Scholastic Art Awards Regional with her oil painting on canvas 【The Music of Smetana's Moldeau】 of our class assignment "Finding Inspiration for Contemporary Abstract Painting from Classical Music":

Both New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy and 2020 United States presidential candidate Cory Booker have sent letters to congratulate C’s outstanding achievement:

In 2020, she was honorably admitted to Parsons School of Design, which is ranked fourth in the World's Best Art & Design Academies, plus an annual scholarship of 40,000 US dollars! We sincerely believe that CN will color our society better places to live.

In addition, from the long-term goal of art teaching, there are some precious characters that are hard to be taught in full-time schools. However, we can combine the history of art and to pass the treasures of human culture in detail to the next generation; and to teach students attitude towards their lives, so that students can get a magnificent new life from inside out. So, our slogan is: "Teaching students to see the world with love and giving students colorful lives."

To me, no trophies or prize certificates can be comparable to what students telling me after they set foot in real world, "Art studies have brought unparalleled happiness to my life."

On the first day of the Chinese New Year in 2021, I received a greeting message from my former student ML, which is so inspirational! The following is her painting of our art class project of " Finding Inspiration for Contemporary Abstract Painting from Classical Music". Only when an artist uses his or her beautiful mind to experience the abstract beauty of Smetana's music, then he/she can paint this kind of extremely beautiful paintings:

In such a difficult 2020, ML could still be selected as one of the representatives of American college graduates in the class of 2020, and be on the cover of famous fashion magazines. How much effort should it take? ML told me that her fashion model career is in full swing:

"ELLE" September issue;

"Vogue" Italian digital issue;

"Desnudo" Italian December issue;

"PAP" February exclusive pictorial, etc. . .

ML had already signed an agreement to go to Milan, Italy to take part in Prada's global exclusive fashion show, but it was cancelled due to the epidemic. She said she will work even harder next season.

What is very instructive for young art students is that I still remember clearly in the 2016 summer session when I talked to ML and her mother in the studio about how to add a minus degree in Marketing to her Parsons School of Design curriculum to enhance her strengths in both design and job hunting. 4 years later, ML really nailed it! ML did not satisfy her professional achievements. She also used the momentum of just graduating from Parsons School of Design to receive two MBA degree admission letters from two top business schools of the America, Stanford University and Columbia University in one fell swoop! A passionate art student can have such a vision and courage to lay out her future thus carefully, and her future will be boundless!

ML is not only outstanding in her academics, she is also like a very caring elder sister to our younger students. Just a year ago, she also squeezed out her busy time to arrange a meeting to help checking a college art portfolio of a student from Art Studio 23 near her school in New York City. That scene was full of love by any standard!

ML's story confirms us again that the success of a talented person is often not selfish, narrow, or unscrupulous; on the contrary, success often comes from a magnificent, inside-out, distinctive new life. Please join me in congratulating ML's brilliant future and great job done by her parents! Please pay more attention to this talented young lady and give her a thumbs up! Please don’t forget to collect fashion magazines about her with me! Thank you.

Taking some time to write these words down because I just feel that it’s my responsibility to record some thoughts and feelings for our younger students and their parents, for the reference of art education. Our approach is not necessarily perfect, and we are constantly learning and improving from our peers.

However, if you continue to think that "learning art is for winning prizes", then you are willing to let art students spend a whole year or two to pursuit an art competition; or, if the art students learn art only for the sake of their parents or for trophies, then, in terms of probability, most of them may not be too far away from disappointment and suffering. Because art education is really a process of subtle and energy accumulation; the purpose of art education is not utilitarian, not rush; on the contrary, the purpose of art education is to cultivate art students’ self-achievements, knowledge of aesthetics, self-conduct, and emotional intelligence, so that the students can learn to appreciate their surroundings, to discover the beauty in the world, thus to love life, to enrich and to achieve their lives!

In recent years, isn’t there a popular workplace inspirational sentiment called: "There are only companies that go bankrupt, and no individual who goes broke"? I think that with the outstanding qualities and unique talents of so many of our students, even "bankrupting companies" will definitely be rescued by them. As for "no individual who goes broke", then, these students’ lives will be more colorful.

In short, how to deal with the art competitions for our kids? For students before high school, we call it "learning but no participating"; for high school students we call it "competition but no paranoid", because many things are far more important and more reliable than art competitions.

Whether it is a student, a parent, a teacher, or public opinion, we must not take the prizes from art contests as your goals for pay-off of your art learning. You are learning art because the pursuit of beauty is everything in one's own life which is no business to others.

Otherwise, not to mention our young kids, even the great professional painters will be hard to get out of the journey of art creation alive.

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