National Scholastic Art Medalists!

National Scholastic Art Medalists for 2023

The Wakefield Art Department is thrilled to announce that Wakefield has 6 winners!!! This is an all-time record for most National Scholastic Medal wins in a year for Wakefield. We also have a very special win that is a first in Arlington county history!

• Marceline Castrillon- National Gold Medal for her Photography Portfolio, “A Swan is Born”
• Nusibha Choudhury- National Silver Medal for her Ceramics Portfolio, “Correlation Between Nature and Mental Health”
• Grace Brougham- National Silver Medal for her photo, “Clipped”
• Marceline Castrillon (again:))- National Silver Medal for her photo, “Saint Sebastian “
• Melanie Encinas Mendoza- National Silver Medal for her drawing, “Practice Makes Perfect”
• Jayden Pena-National Gold Medal for his photo, “The Boxer”

This is a huge win for Wakefield, as our artists have won 6 of the 13 Arlington National Medals this year, 2 of which are Portfolio Awards. A Scholastic Arts portfolio consists of 6 works of art that have a cohesive theme showing the vision and talent of the artist, the culmination of 4 years of art, and is accompanied by an artist’s statement.

With that being said, Marceline Castrillon has won Arlington County’s very first Gold Medal Art Portfolio! There are only 8 art portfolios that are awarded National Gold each year as this special distinction comes with a $12,500 scholarship! In addition, Nusibha Choudhury was 1 of only 60 National Silver Medal portfolios awarded this year.

To put everything into perspective and to highlight this phenomenal achievement, here is the official information from Scholastic Arts: More than 300,000 works of art and writing were submitted to the 2023 Scholastic Awards. Your work was selected by some of the foremost leaders in the visual and literary arts for excellence in originality, technical skill, and the emergence of a personal voice or vision. Less than 2,000 works received a National Medal, which places you within the top 1% of all submissions! Here’s to Wakefield cracking the 1% year after year.