Parrish Honors Student Artists

The East End has been a magnet for artists for roughly 150 years. Now, the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill is honoring the next generation of up-and-coming young artists who will be the heirs to that grand tradition.

On Saturday, February 27, the Parrish celebrates what it calls the “outstanding works” of 32 student artists, including 23 seniors, who will receive “Awards of Excellence,” and nine students in the 9^th, 10^th and 11^th grades, who will be cited as winners of the “Ones to Watch Awards.”

The honorees include two Pierson High School seniors, Shanti Escalante, in the painting category, for an untitled work on canvas, and Max Micallef in the photography category, for an untitled photo. Elizabeth Hochstedler, a Bridgehampton High School senior, was cited for her painting, “Three Tools,” a work of acrylic on canvas.

Other winners hail from the Ross School, East Hampton High School, Westhampton Beach High School and roughly a dozen other public, private and parochial schools in Suffolk County.

Their works are currently on display at the museum’s “2016 Student Exhibition,” which features the creations of more than 1,000 young artists from eastern Long Island and includes painting, sculpture, drawing, illustration, photography, mixed media and printmaking.

The show, which opened on January 30 and continues to February 28, is a 60-year tradition at the Parrish, providing local students an opportunity to showcase both traditional and non-traditional approaches to art-making in a world-class professional venue.

The honorees were selected by Neill Slaughter, a professor of Visual Art at Long Island University’s C.W. Post campus, who will present the awards at the Parrish with Museum Director Terrie Sultan. An awards ceremony to celebrate the students’ art and accomplishments will be held at 1 p.m., and the event is open to the pubic.

“In the best art there is a transcendence, whereby the viewer is emotionally moved or taken to another place by the artist's interpretation,” Mr. Slaughter said in a release.

“Sometimes the artist's idea is better than the execution ... Other times the skill is visually apparent, but there is no transcendence,” he added. “Recognizing that in this particular exhibition there are artists with more years of practice and or education than others, I tried to see beyond these distinctions.”