Mason County Student Wins National Photography Award

Mason County High School senior Nicholas “Nick” Reece has won one of the nation’s highest awards in photography — a gold medal in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards.

The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards were established in 1923 to recognize talent, vision and ingenuity of the nation’s youth and to bring recognition to those talents.

The awards are presented by The Alliance for Young Artists and Writers, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to identify students with exceptional artistic and literary talent and present their remarkable work to the world through the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. Students receive opportunities for recognition, exhibition, publication, and scholarship.

There were 300,000 submissions for the 2015 competition and only the top 5-7 percent are considered on the national level for gold or silver medals.

Reece’s journey to winning the national honor began with four submissions to the Southeast Regional competition of the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards in January, where he won two gold key and one silver key awards. One of his gold key works, entitled The Geometry was selected for the national competition.

MCHS students Jarett Coyle and Sierra O’Cull, were also awarded gold keys at the Southeast Regional competition for their work.

Reece’s photo, The Geometry is of two skyscrapers in downtown Chicago, connected by a sky walk.  Reece said he took the photo in October while on a campus visit to DePaul University.

He said when he looked up at the sky walk, the lines of the buildings were the kind of material he needed for a recent photography assignment from MCHS art teacher Stephanie Martinez. 

The assignment was leading lines, and the lines of the building lead to the sky walk above.  He said he laid on his back and shot upwards, then edited in the geometric shapes forming the sky; the photo is processed in black and white.

“I saw the sky walk and I wanted to get it perfectly symmetrical …I thought that shading would add a cool spin to the photo,” Reece said.

Reece said Martinez has been a “great inspiration” to him.

“It’s all Martinez, she’s excellent.  It’s really wonderful to get this kind of recognition, I wasn’t expecting this so it’s tremendous,” he said.

Reece is considering attending Miami of Ohio or DePaul University in the fall; he plans to major in cinematography and digital photography as he pursues his goal of becoming a director of photography in the film industry.

MCHS students have submitted works to the Southeast Regional Competition each year, with five students entering works in 2015. The competition is open to public high schools as well as private schools with an emphasis on the arts.

This is the first time a Mason County High School student has won at the national level.

“It’s very exciting. Having him in class this year has been a real treat for me. Nick has an exceptional talent for photography,” Martinez said.

Reece is the son of Caroline and Shaun Reece of Maysville and the grandson of Denny and Carol Ann Keller of Ripley, Ohio.

Scholastic Art and Writing Awards Alumni include artists Andy Warhol, Philip Pearlstein, Cy Twombly, Robert Indiana, Kay WalkingStick and John Baldessari; writers Sylvia Plath, Truman Capote, Bernard Malamud, Myla Goldberg, and Joyce Carol Oates; photographer Richard Avedon (who won for poetry); actors Frances Farmer, Robert Redford, Alan Arkin and John Lithgow; and filmmakers Stan Brakhage, Ken Burns and Richard Linklater.

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