Great Neck South student Grace Nah named best-in-show winner of 'Long Island's Best: Young Artists at The Heckscher Museum'

A Great Neck student has won a local art contest that received a record number of submissions this year.

Grace Nah, a junior at Great Neck South High School, was the best-in-show winner of “Long Island’s Best: Young Artists at The Heckscher Museum,” which is an annual juried art contest coordinated by The Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington.

The contest, which received 553 submissions from 77 high schools across Long Island, challenged participants to select an artwork as their inspiration and then create an original piece and write an artist’s statement explaining their creative process. Ninety-one entries were selected for a curated show that ran through June 4.

Nah’s winning submission, “Look Above,” was acrylic on canvas and depicted her looking into the overhead lighting in a dark restaurant. It was inspired by Fernando Carpaneda’s acrylic on canvas “Tsunami on Rockaway Beach,” which features two men posing in front of a tsunami.

“I replicated the bold and vivacious colors of Carpaneda’s piece and added even more color dynamics,” Nah said. “My identity speaks loudly, standing in the middle with the brightest neon.”

Second place went to Sophia Rose, a junior at Harborfields High School in Greenlawn, for “A Place From Time,” an acrylic on canvas. Third went to Great Neck South junior Julia Chan for her mixed-media piece, “It’s Gonna Get Better.” Fourth went to Sayville High School senior Morgan Giordano for “Beyond the Labyrinth,” an acrylic on cardboard.

DIX HILLS

PClassic programming winners

A Half Hollow Hills High School East team — Arav Chand, Daniel Kogan, Niyanth Ponnusamy and Aayush Prakash — has placed first in the classic division of the “Spring Philadelphia Classic (PClassic),” a computer programming competition for high schoolers hosted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Computer Science Society.

The four-hour competition was open to four-student teams in grades 5-12. Each team was required to bring a laptop with Java, Python or C++ programming.

Half Hollow Hills East was the only team to solve all of the competition’s eight problems.

GREAT NECK, BETHPAGE

Inspiration Award

Great Neck South High School’s “Rebel Robotics” team has received the Inspiration Award as part of Optimum’s 2023 Innovator Awards, which recognize robotics teams nationwide in areas including inspiration and technology.

For winning, the team was awarded a $2,000 grant. The award’s runner-up was Bethpage High School’s “Regal Eagles” team, which won a $1,500 grant.

Teams from seven other local districts — Hicksville, Lindenhurst, Plainview-Old Bethpage, Sachem, Smithtown, South Huntington and Westhampton Beach — were honorable mentions and received $500.

SUFFOLK

Otto Kahn Awards

Eight Suffolk County arts students have received Otto Kahn Awards from Friends of Oheka, which is a nonprofit dedicated to the protection, preservation and public awareness of Oheka Castle in Huntington. They won $3,000 and had the opportunity to perform or display their work during a gala at the castle.

Winners and their high schools were: Anabelle Bryant, Cold Spring Harbor; Jacob Leshnower and Mark Shapiro, Half Hollow Hills East; Christopher Hummel, Harborfields; Victoria Befumo and Katerina Damiano, Huntington; and Fern Brazeau and Andrew Noonan, Walt Whitman in South Huntington.

Eligible students were required to be majoring in performing arts, visual arts or music.

ISLANDWIDE

George Farber Awards

Eighteen students have received George Farber Outstanding Student Awards from Nassau BOCES for their “passion, perseverance, enthusiasm, outstanding character, scholarship and a willingness to help others,” the agency said. They each received $100.

Winners and their school districts were: Melanye Cruz-Guzman, Baldwin; Danielle Marino, Bellmore-Merrick; Marcus Allen, Copiague; Joseph Santana and Joshua Varughese, East Meadow; Michael Romani, Farmingdale; Hector Fernandez Gomez, Glen Cove; Jason Nejat, Great Neck; Elias Gomez-Henriquez and Endy Morales, Hempstead; Braden Hennessy, Island Trees; James Tinebra, Plainview-Old Bethpage; Erica Bird, Roosevelt; Rory Clancy, Seaford; Scott Wong, Syosset; Kelvin Bonilla, Uniondale; Harry Saxton, Wantagh; and Zain Sosa, Westbury.

ISLANDWIDE

WAC Science Fair

Twenty-one Long Island students placed first in various categories of this year’s WAC Lighting Foundation Invitational Science Fair coordinated by the Research Association, which is a nonprofit consortium of lead research teachers from 12 local participating schools.

Great Neck South and Jericho high schools had six first-place winners, who tied for the most of any school. Great Neck South’s winners were Luke Huang, Yida Pan, Amanda Shi, Eric Sodhi, Richard Xu and Yifu Zuo, while Jericho’s winners were Natasha Kulviwat, Samay Lakhani, Adya Misra, Rhea Sakaria, Victoria Tan and Matthew Wang.

Other first-place winners and their high schools were: Jonathan Zhang, Commack; Ashley Lam and Jeylin Lee, Herricks; Manav Gupta, Christina Kim, Jordan Li, Grace Punzalan and William Wesson, Manhasset; and Hanah Youn, Roslyn. 

By Michael R. Ebert

michael.ebert@newsday.com

Michael R. Ebert is an education researcher and has worked for Newsday in various capacities since 2003. He was part of an 11-person team named as 2008 Pulitzer Prize finalists for investigative coverage of the LIRR's platform safety issues.