WALKERTOWN — A Walkertown High School student will soon have a chance to see her artwork in Carnegie Hall.
Karen Umanzor, a junior, will go to New York City in June for the 2019 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, a three-day event celebrating the students who won awards and their teachers.
Her gold-medal winning piece, made with a mix of media — colored pencils, ink and watercolor — depicts loteria, a game she played growing up.
“We had to choose a game and kind of connect it to how it reflects on our life,” she said. “So I chose loteria because it relates to my traditions, mostly from my mom’s side, like my parents.”
Loteria, the Spanish word for lottery, is similar to bingo, Umanzor said. Each player has a card with 16 colorful images on it.
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In the upper corner of the work, there’s a depiction of Umanzor, as well as her mother, dancing. Umanzor said the assignment to the class from Nina Street, her art teacher, was to choose a game and connect it to their lives.
“It reminds me of when we would go to parties and we would all play as a family,” she said.
Umanzor said she was in complete shock when she learned she had won at the national level.
“And I just couldn’t stop smiling and dancing, and I was just so happy and proud of myself,” she said.
It’s the first time she’s won an award like that for her artwork, Umanzor said.
“It’s crazy to believe that my artwork is going to Carnegie Hall,” she said.
Street said she’s sent multiple students to the regional level for the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, but she’s never had a student win at the national level before.
Street recalled learning about the news via email, and at first glossing over the fact that a colleague had sent congratulations about the national award.
But when it registered, Street said she was elated for her student.
“So needless to say, I had a fit,” she said. “I’ve not gone to that level before, so I did not know all that entailed at that level, that’s when I found out her piece is going to be along with other students on exhibition in Carnegie Hall.”
Both of them, along with Umanzor’s younger sister, will go to New York June 5-7, Street said.
Umanzor has been a student of Street’s since ninth grade, and her teacher said she’s seen her talent since then.
“I knew then, I could see Karen had what we call hands,” she said, referring to Umanzor’s talent. “I tell them all the time, ‘You’ve got hands, girl.’ And so I noticed in the ninth grade, Karen had hands. And not only did she have hands, she had technique.”
In addition to talent, Street said Umanzor has patience in her work and is deliberate in her art pieces.
“I tell the students all the time, every piece of work you do, treat it like it’s a masterpiece, because if you go in it with that mind, that means you’re going to take your time to make the results of it be a masterpiece,” Street said. “So when she goes in to do a piece of artwork, she is very meticulous, she can’t be rushed, she has a set program in her mind of what she wants to see played out on the paper in whatever she’s doing.”
And if she ever feels stuck or unsure in the process, Umanzor said she knows she can come to Street for help and reassurance.
“I always ask her for advice and see if this was good or if I could do better in some things,” she said. “And she really did help out a lot, and she would encourage me, like if it wasn’t my day she would encourage me to keep on working and try my best.”
It’s still early into her career as an artist, and Umanzor said she hopes to continue it well after high school.
“I would for sure continue art, and I would continue art as a career, maybe in art therapy so I could help other people … expressing their feelings in drawing,” she said, adding that she has personally found art to be therapeutic and would like the opportunity to help others in that regard.
“I think the world is in for a treat with Ms. Karen Umanzor, I really do,” Street said.