Several New Canaan Winners in Silvermine Arts School Exhibition

Several New Canaan art students won awards at the recent Silvermine School of Art Exhibition, open to anyone who completed at least a full term of art classes at the school in town.

Awards were given in adult and youth categories and across various types of media, from painting and drawing to ceramics, digital imaging, and metalwork.

These nine New Canaan students won awards:

• Frank Bordanaro received an honorable mention in the adult category for drawing
• In the “Youth” category, for ages 11 to 17, for mixed media, Ann Pakhayev won a first prize for her work, “Approaching.”
• Also in the Youth category, for painting, Grayson Kennedy won a first prize for “Man Curly Hair.”
• Beckett Walters (pictured) won honorable mention in the Youth category for a ceramic work.
• In the “Junior” category (ages 5 to 10), for ceramics, Alexa Alexander of New Canaan won first prize for “Resting Frog.”
• Waverly Walters won first prize in the Junior category in drawing for “Cartoon Cast.”
• The Cynthia Mullins Award (in the Junior category) went to Emma Peloso of New Canaan for “Diamond Plate” in stoneware clay.
• Soraya Breed won an honorable mention in the Junior category for collage.
• Lucas Breed won an honorable mention in the Junior category for a mixed-media work.

The Best in Show Award went to Elaine Leegstra of Greenwich for her oil painting entitled “Here’s Looking at You.”

The judge of this year’s exhibition, the 25th the school has put on, was Beth Livensperger, who lives and works in Queens, NY, who has exhibited nationally and internationally, includingin New York, Philadelphia, Providence, RI, Santa Monica, CA and Seoul.

Livensperger is a former Aldrich Museum Radius Fellow and has done residencies at the Weir Farm, Vermont Studio Center, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. In 2010-2011 she was an artist-in-residence at the Abrons Art Center in Manhattan.

She currently teaches painting and drawing at SUNY Purchase. Livensperger holds a bachelor’s of fine arts degree from the Cooper Union and a master of fine arts degree from the Yale University School of Art.

Picture (contributed by Silvermine School of Art), Waverly Walters (left) and Beckett Walters (right)