Although art is Clara Luce’s passion, she often receives more acknowledgement for her work as a robotics or track team member then she does as an IB Visual Arts student. However, this changed when her artistic merit was recognized with a Scholastic Art award. She won a Gold Key award in the Drawing and Illustration category for her piece “Backpack.” Gold Keys are the top regional honor and are submitted to New York for national judging.

The art is a two dimensional diagram of a figure donning a backpack. Each step was broken down into a sequence of pictures annotated with arrows to show the movement of the backpack.

“It was weird because I submitted it on a whim,” Luce said. “It was for my Cornell application. I applied to their specific major called Design and Environmental Analysis, which required that you diagram a simple, everyday task, so that’s why I created it. I had a photo of it already so I just sent it in.”

Luce may have submitted the art spontaneously, but its creation took persistence, dedication, and creative thought. According to Luce, it took around twelve hours of planning and creating several different drafts.

“First I took photos of myself putting on a backpack, and then I went through and traced them on paper. From there I simplified the details so that the lines and composition were really minimal and added design elements like the arrows that are on the piece and the dots on the bottom showing the number of steps,” Luce said. “I used markers to create the black lines and then paint to fill in the coloring of the backpack.”

Luce is excited to push her artistic skills to their limits in the near and far future, coupling her love of art with her love of science.

“Hopefully in college I’ll be able to double major in science and visual arts, and then from there I can use that dual perspective in my career,” Luce said. “I’m not really sure how that will carry over into a career but I just want to have both perspectives because that’s something that most scientists don’t have.”

Luce has shown that a lot of hard work and dedication, a bit of luck, and a willingness to take risks eventually pay off with attention and appreciation for who you are and what you do.

“I got to go to an awards ceremony, and seeing a bunch of the other artists there and their hard work with mine was pretty exciting,” Luce said. “It’s cool to get some external validation.”