Congratulations to Sophie Wheeler (College II) who has been awarded the coveted Langwith Scott Award for their Youth Category.
The Scott Award Competition, an annual competition organised by Langwith College at the University of York, is open for anyone to enter, whether they are a professional artist, a student in Langwith College, university, staff or a member of the general public. The award committee accepts entries from all people of all ages in all mediums with limitations only on entries for performance art.
Sophie’s entry related to the competition’s designated theme for 2018, which was ‘origins‘. The judging panel, comprising a group of talented local artists, chose the winners primarily in regard to relation to the theme, the quality of the work and the message.
Sophie said, “I concentrated on the Big Bang, since that’s where we all come from. For my topic in Art, I was experimenting with manipulating paint in different ways. It so happens that this piece was the first in a series and I decided to enter it for the Langwith Scott. I used lots of different colours and melded them in different ways, even with a hairdryer. There is a lot of texture because and it has quite a few layers of very thick paint which has cracked during the drying process. The later pieces I did used different types of paint, including PVA, which does not crack as much. It felt great to win the Scott Award.”
Head of Art, Sian Gabraitis, said, “Sophie’s work was very experimental; she used in her series a combination of inks, paints and even melted wax. The piece she submitted is a visual abstraction of the Big Bang that is very exploratory and tactile. She was working with that idea in her coursework, looking at reflections of life, bubbles and shapes of the earth. Since 2015, The Mount has pursued an initiative to turn ‘STEM into STEAM’, incorporating creative Arts disciplines into STEM, and hence bringing creativity into the heart of innovation. Sophie’s award-winning work, and her experimental approach in the creative process, is testament to how STEM into STEAM helps girls thrive.”
The Mount Senior School is the UK’s only Quaker school for girls, with a reputation for girls excelling in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and maths) studies.
The annual Langwith Scott awards are made possible due to the remarkable generosity of the late Eileen and Michael Scott, who were both artists and honorary members of Langwith College’s Senior Common Room.
