A Revere High School’s (RHS) AP Art student won the Ohio Governor’s Award of Excellence after submitting a number of her art pieces.
For fifty-four years art students compete in The Ohio Governor’s Award of excellence, in which art students from all different high schools in Ohio can submit their work to be judged at a state level. Out of 8,113 entries, Junior Kavana Lokesh’s work was selected along with 318 others to have their art judged.
Lokesh submitted her work into the Scholastic Art Awards, and won, and then she submitted her art to win a second award.
“ I submitted a couple of my pieces to the Governor’s Youth Art Exhibition and after two rounds of judging, one of my pieces made it into the exhibition. The first round is the Scholastics award, and then the second round is what I won, the Governor’s Award of Excellence,” Lokesh said.
Art teacher Bob Pierson explained what goes into a nomination for the award. He said it is almost like winning the State finals in a high school sport.
“It went through two judging processes to be at the state level. Scholastics is the regional level which she won and then she won the national level which is the Ohio Governor’s Award of Excellence,” Pierson said.
Lokesh was the only winner from Revere this year, and Pierson explained how challenging this award is to receive.
“It’s also very hard to win something at that level. . . . We had other entries, but Kavana was the only one that won at the national level,” Pierson said.
Lokesh’s hard work can also be recognized outside of the art room. Her involvement on the executive board of the Mu Alpha Theta team, and her participation in her Honors Precalculus class is noticed by Joanne Gillette, an RHS math teacher and the Mu Alpha Theta adviser.
“Kavana has a wonderful mathematical mind and does an excellent job of explaining difficult math concepts to others. She works hard and excels in my class. Kavana is definitely both left-brained and right-brained, as she is very talented in art as well as math,” Gillette said.
Something that makes her art work stand out is the focus of her AP Art portfolio. It is unique to Lokesh, and she explained what her focus was.
“My work focuses on my culture as a second generation immigrant. Both of my parents were born and raised in India, while I have lived in America my whole life. I chose to depict how my family celebrates our culture by wearing ethnic clothing and meeting with friends for Indian functions,” Lokesh said.
Her focus of her art is personal to her, and also the style of drawing that she uses is symbolic. Lokesh uses a more abstract style of colored pencil drawing called scribble drawing and she spoke about that.
“My piece was an impressionist style scribble drawing that focused less on actual details of my reference picture and more of the general shapes and colors, so I think it being different from a typical realistic drawing made it stand out,” Lokesh said.
The art style she uses contributes to her overall piece, but there is more than just technique and style that goes into Lokesh’s art. Pierson said that she took a larger approach to this piece, and how he aided her throughout the project.
“It’s a large piece, and I did encourage that, when it’s multiple figures, to make things bigger because there’s less margin for error. And a bigger piece is not an easy thing. Less is more,” Pierson said.
From a young age, Lokesh found herself intrigued by art, she spoke on when her art journey first started.
“I’ve been doing art since I was young and I have been able to schedule an art class every year I’ve been in high school so that keeps me involved in it,” Lokesh said.
Lokesh was one of 25 out of the original 319 selected students to have their art displayed at the Rhode office tower in Columbus Ohio on Sunday, April 21.
