Enjoying Ice Cream
photo by Katy Smith
Baylor senior Katy Smith has been awarded a National Gold Medal Scholastic Art and Writing Award for photography. Her photograph, Enjoying Ice Cream, was chosen from her three Gold Key award-winning photos at the regional level.
Since 1923, the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards have recognized the vision, ingenuity, and talent of the nation’s youth, and provided opportunities for creative teens to be celebrated. Through the awards, students receive opportunities for recognition, exhibition, publication, and scholarships. Students across America submitted nearly 320,000 original works during the 2016 program year across 29 different categories of art and writing. Submissions are blindly adjudicated by some of the foremost leaders in the visual and literary arts.
The awarded photo was taken by Smith on a 2016 trip to Jamaica with the Baylor community service program. The students were treating a group of poor, elderly Jamaican residents to ice cream and Smith caught Mr. Rudy and Miss Joseph, both blind, enjoying what Miss Joseph called “the best thing that had touched her lips in years.”
Smith’s love of photography goes hand-in-hand with her involvement in community service. “Photography has changed my perspective on the world, as cliché as that sounds,” she explains. “Facing difficulties in life is like taking a photograph. You can focus on the bad parts or you can find something beautiful around them. Working in the community service program has taught me to find something positive in bad situations. I know it’s a weird metaphor, but it’s like taking a picture. You can focus on the good or the bad.”
National Gold Medal winners will be recognized this summer at a ceremony held at Carnegie Hall in New York City where their works will be exhibited. Smith’s photo will be exhibited, but she will not attend the ceremony due to a previously planned return service trip to Jamaica.
Smith was one of four Baylor students - Connie Hui '18, Eric Wu '18, and Theo Maedgen '20 were the others - to receive Scholastic Art and Writing Awards at the regional level. All submissions were organized by Baylor's Digital Media and Community Developer Ilana Habib.
Katy Smith
photo by