Middle and high school-age artists from across the state enter their class projects and portfolios into the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards competition every year. This year, about 3,600 pieces of student art from Michigan were submitted, and five Oxford students got recognition for their work.

On Monday Feb 11, the students were honored at the Detroit Institute of Arts in midtown Detroit. Oxford Middle School eighth-graders Ethan Fela, Reina St. Juliana and Kailee Wojcik were recognized by receiving honorable mentions and silver keys.

But, OMS eighth-grader Anna Coronado-Ridke and Oxford Schools Early College ninth-grader Luke Farwell received the competition’s highest award: the gold key. Farwell’s work also got him three silver keys and four honorable mentions. He is also celebrating receiving scholarships from the Atlier Art Studio and Blick Art Supply, both based in Royal Oak.

“I was so surprised. I was not expecting (my work) to get the highest award,” Coronado-Ridke, who won her gold key in drawing, said.

Because they have gold keys, both students’ work will be sent to New York to be judged at the national level.

Coronado-Rinke’s work was submitted by her teachers at OMS, where she primarily does her art training. But, Coronado-Rinke said she’s always drawing and trying to get better at depicting the world around her. Farwell, on the other hand, submitted his works independently and mostly takes art classes through the Stoney Creek School of Art and Oakland University.

But no matter how they got there, both students were excited to have their art displayed in the DIA among the works of Diego Rivera, Vincent Van Gough and Pablo Picasso.

“It’ll feel really amazing, but really surprising at the same time,” Coronado-Rinke said. “I was not expecting my art to go that far that fast.”

“It feels amazing,” said Farwell, who received a gold key in painting. “I look up to those amazing artists and just being in the vicinity of their work, to be near it is amazing. It’s a great feeling to know that your art is appreciated and that people will get to see it in a professional gallery.”

Farwell’s gold key piece, a portrait of a soldier smoking a cigar and covered in orange and blue titled “Uncle Randy”, is an exploration of humanity’s relationship with war. Farwell said he enjoys portraits because of the complicated nature of the human body.

“I wanted to look at humans and our relationship with war and how we have grown to be war and kind of like it,” he said. “Having my grandma’s brother who was in the military in Vietnam, he has health issues from that, and seeing that war has effects on humans and the human mind. I think it’s very interesting how war can change someone or destroy them.”

Coronado-Rinke’s piece, titled “Symmetrical Design”, is a stained glass window-looking piece that knits flowers and vines together in black and white. She loves art’s expressive aspects, and wants the piece’s viewers to feel that.

“You know how in coloring books they have all of those pieces that come together? I kind of wanted my drawing to look like that with the flowers,” she said.

All of the honored art from Michigan students will be displayed for exhibition in the Ford Building at the College of Creative Studies in Detroit through March 1.