Seniors place in arts competition

Seniors Rebecca Sugar and Robyn Haley earned recognition as a finalist and a merit winner respectively in the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts' 2005 Arts Recognition and Talent Search.

Sugar and Haley both take art classes as part of the Visual Arts Center (VAC) program at Albert Einstein High School, and every senior in the class applied to the competition. Around Oct. 30, Haley and Sugar each selected 10 items from their artwork, took slides of the work using special film and submitted the pieces.

Sugar submitted five slides in a series of related paintings and five as individual paintings. Her work depicted figures in space and figures in interiors. Haley, on the other hand, submitted a "concentration," or collection, of 10 different paintings showing crowd scenes that incorporated pattern. Of all the students at VAC, Sugar was the only finalist, and Haley was one of five merit and honorable mention winners.

Sugar, one of 100 finalists nationwide, was ecstatic when she was informed of her accomplishment. "I was shocked," she said, "especially since I was the only one out of the entire class."

As a finalist, Sugar will attend "ARTS Week" in Miami, Florida during the week of Jan. 10, 2005, where she will participate in various seminars and workshops each day. "Sounds kind of like boot camp to me," she joked about the busy schedule.

Sugar, initially a comic artist, learned how to paint two years ago, around the time she began work on the art pieces that won her the finalist position. Now, she keeps up her pastime with a passion. "I still do comics. I just don't show them to everybody," she said.