This summer, instead of just relaxing and forgetting about what the upcoming school year has to bring, two members of the Kingswood Oxford community decided to step out of their comfort zones and explore something new. Thanks to the Patricia Rossoff Endowment Fellowship for Media Arts and the Courtney Denow Scholarship, junior Racheal Segal and senior Raphael Blocher spent their summers exploring photography and oil painting at programs designed to challenge, inspire, and prepare them to build on their interests.
Racheal received the Patricia Rossoff Endowment Fellowship, awarded by visual arts teacher Greg Scranton for her work in media arts, specifically photography. “She’s just technically a really sound photographer,” Mr. Scranton said thoughtfully. This grant allowed her to attend the New York Film Academy’s photography program in the summer.
Raffi received the Courtney Denow Scholarship for his work in visual arts, including painting and drawing, which allowed him to participate in a one-week oil painting program through the Arts Institute of Chicago’s early college program, running from July 24-31.
For Racheal, through her experience at NYFA where she spent a week learning new shooting techniques, editing skills, and genres within photography, she dealt with many challenges while she furthered her experience in the realm of photography. One highlight for her was learning how to take photos in the bustling, loud, and crowded streets of New York City. “I learned that street photography is really fun, especially on the editing side,” Racheal said.
Beyond learning about street photography, the program also taught Racheal how to step out of her comfort zone when taking photos in public locations, whilst still allowing the photos to be as authentic and real as possible.
She returned from the experience with a new perspective on how photographs can be taken anywhere, not just in sports media, which she’s most experienced in. While Racheal spent the summer immersed in media arts, Raffi took a different approach, exploring oil painting during his break. Raffi spent a part of his summer learning about different oil painting techniques at AIC.
With this program, they were challenged to do assignments such as painting self-portraits. Raffi was “feeling limited” in the beginning since the classes mostly focused on structure and composition at the beginning of the course. But as time went on, Raffi embraced the experience. “It made me feel more comfortable with being uncomfortable,” Raffi said.
Outside of just structure and composition, AIC allowed Raffi to meet new people who had similar interests to him from across the United States. “It was a really interesting experience to be with a bunch of people that have the same interest as you,” Raffi said, “and despite painting for so long every day, they were all wanting to paint, and we all felt motivated.”
He returned from this experience with a newfound understanding of how oil painting works as well as the time and effort it takes to master it.
Although Racheal and Raffi attended two entirely different programs this summer, both came back to KO with newfound experiences that extended past our community. Each came back with new skills, perspectives, and understanding of topics that they might want to pursue in the future.
Now that the summer has ended and the air is getting colder, both students are bringing what they learned back into the classrooms. What began as a grant opportunity has become an experience for two of our Wyverns to explore their passions and may continue to influence their art for years to come.
