More than 35 St. Stephen’s Artists Earn Top Honors at Scholastic Art Awards

St. Stephen’s Nancy Wilson Scanlan Gallery was recently filled with award-winning work of dozens of middle and high school artists who recently competed in the 2025 Austin region Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. The contest, which has been hosted by SSES since the 1990s, drew close to 2,000 entries from dozens of public and private schools and homeschool groups across Central Texas. Regional winners move on to the national awards, which are announced in June 2025.

 

Students competed in 28 categories, from photography to ceramics and glass, to jewelry, sculpture and printmaking. Of the 150 entries from St. Stephen’s students, 55 entries earned the top awards: a Gold Key, Silver Key or honorable mention.

 

SSES Gold Key Recipients: Elinore English ’27, Hana Hassibi ’25, Josephine Herman ’28, Kieran Mohindra-Green ’25, Jasper Oehler ’28 (2), Dune Reid ’30 (2), Riddhima Singh ’25, Jolie Stough ’25, Chiamaka Ufudo ’26, Leela Weisser ’25 (2), Cindy Yang ’26, Charlsie Yarger ’27

 

SSES Silver Key Recipients: Elizabeth Ahlgren ’26, Marygrace Beinke ’25, Scarlett Bellm ’29, Ava Ellis ’29, Hana Hassibi ’25, Lainey Leslie ’25, Kieran Mohindra-Green ’25, Gracie Morton ’25, Jasper Oehler ’28, Walter Ralls ’26 (2), Jared Swartz ’27, Alexander Vokes ’26 (2)

 

SSES Honorable Mentions: Alexander Agrawal ’25, Austin Chiu ’26(2), Sebastian Estep ’25(2), Feyisayo Faweya ’28, Yifei Gong ’25, Henry Hanna ’27, Hana Hassibi ’25, Fan Yu Hung ’26, Justine Jeong ’27, Isaac Lin ’27, Hana Milosavljevic ’28, Mariana Munch ’27, Jasper Oehler ’28, Grace Oh ’27, Walter Ralls ’26 (2), Scarlett Ratcliff ’27, Dune Reid ’30, Alex Sa ’27, Jolie Stough ’25, Austin Train ’29, Leela Weisser ’25 (2), Zijun Xu ’25

 

The work of all St. Stephen’s award winners will be on display in the Scanlan Gallery from mid-February to mid-April for the community to experience and enjoy. Congratulations are also in order for their SSES Fine Arts instructors: Michelle Avery, Chris Caselli, Mike Dolan, Britt Thorp and Elizabeth Zepeda.

 

Scholastic offers all students the freedom to submit work they have created for a class assignment or independently outside of school– an opportunity that earned Josephine Herman ’28 earned a Gold Key for her metal and wire flower sculpture called “Grief” that she created over the summer at a contemporary art camp. 

 

Multi-year Gold Key winner Leela Weisser ’25, who has participated in Scholastic since her 6th grade year, says the competition has played a big role in shaping the artist she is today and the diverse portfolio of work she submitted with her college applications. Weisser plans to major in art and political science at Rice University this fall.

 

“Scholastic pushes you to try new things,” said Weisser. “There's so many different categories, for example, I learned about extended projects my junior year, which is when I did more annulations that interacted with the viewer.”

 

Each winner was honored during a January awards reception in the Helm Fine Arts Center. Texas-born and Austin-based Nigerian American artist Dawn Okoro, who has been featured in Harper’s Bazaar, Architectural Digest, USA Today, W Magazine, and Essence, delivered the keynote address.

 

Okoro also served as one of 17 competition guest jurors — a diverse group of local and out-of-state artists who evaluated the entries in a live, organized online format. Scholastic Art Regional Director and SSES Visual Arts Instructor Elizabeth Zepeda has organized and championed the event since 2012. 

 

With only two short weeks between judging and the awards ceremony, SSES International Program Assistant Liza Ayres ’14 recently stepped in this season as the new Scholastic Art assistant director. Zepeda says Ayres was a wonderful addition to the team, and her dedication to making connections with artists, communicating with everyone and proofing data was invaluable.

 

Zepeda was also excited to celebrate one of her accomplished goals, an increased number of middle school entries. It was a coordinated effort with Dr. Kara Czepiel, Austin Independent School District’s coordinator of fine arts. Dr. Czepiel raised awareness by connecting with middle school teachers across the district and sharing that AISD would be covering the cost for a portion of the students’ entries.

 

“Once you get students in middle school involved, they continue to participate,” said Zepeda. 

“It’s such a nice range to see the creative journey continue from the middle school students to the freshman up to the seniors.” 

 

Award winners for the writing portion of the competition will be announced soon. Stay tuned!

 

Chris Gunnin - Head of School
Liz Moon - Fine Arts Department Chair

Elizabeth Zepeda - Regional Affiliate Director

Liza Ayres - Assistant Regional Affiliate Director

Robert Whyburn - Technical Director

 

SSES Fine Art Patrons

Karine Kim

Nicole & Shane Herman

David Allen

Chris Caselli

Krista Dillard

Sarah Garcia

Brian Gray

Alex Oberle

Elliot Pena

Mark Porter

Hannah True

Generous printing of programs provided by

Rainmaker Document Technologies