Will Close '15 Wins National American Visions Medal
Will Close '15 has won the National American Visions Medal from The Boston Globe Scholastic Writing & Art Awards, and will receive a $70,000 scholarship distributed over four years to attend The School of the Museum of Fine Arts.
He will accept his medal at Carnegie Hall for his piece titled “Brainscape,” a pen and ink rendering on multiple hand-tea-stained sheets is a 38 x 30 inch drawing, originally created for the course, Drawing: Conceptual Strategies, and took a month to complete. The assignment challenged him to create a “monotonous drawing,” in which he explored the process of mark making. His piece will be on tour at exhibits around the country for the next two years.
According to Will, the resulting landscape piece represents the human search for “a horizon, a direction to move in.”
“Landscapes are typically held together by a horizon,” Will explains. “My drawing is a landscape of both subconscious and conscious and its place in its surroundings. There is no horizon in the subconscious, yet our subconscious is constantly searching for a horizon or bearing in the otherwise chaos of stimuli. “In my drawing there are many directions to move in, many horizons. Yet as a whole there appears to be no one horizon. As a teenager I am staring into a mess of horizons trying to find the horizon. I am searching for an inner horizon and exterior horizon.”
As the CSW senior looks forward to life after high school, he is considering attending the School of the Museum of Fine Arts to which he has been accepted. No matter which higher education institution he enrolls next year, Will says, “In regards to pursuing art I would say art will always be pursuing me, so no matter where I end up or what I end up doing, art will be there too.”
He said that his time at CSW has prepared him well for his next steps in education and life. “A book found in the [CSW] pottery room –about fractals and chaos theory – changed my life and verified many theories I had been developing since childhood,” Will shares. “I have loved everything I've learned and explored in high school.”
The courses and teachers at CSW have exceeded his expectations, especially in art and chemistry. The opportunity for independent study, a hallmark of the educational process at the coed day and boarding high school, stands out for Will.
“I loved exploring chemistry and art during my independent. The conceptual drawing course was wonderful and pushed the boundaries of art for me also. All these moments are connected and should be seen as one, all equally important,” Will states.
The senior says that winning the American Visions award further encourages him to make art and ponder what art means in society. He plans to continue to pursue fine art and branch out into other disciplines after art school. “If all else fails,” he laughs, “I will go off and become a hermit and make paintings with peanut butter.”
According to Will, the resulting landscape piece represents the human search for “a horizon, a direction to move in.”
“Landscapes are typically held together by a horizon,” Will explains. “My drawing is a landscape of both subconscious and conscious and its place in its surroundings. There is no horizon in the subconscious, yet our subconscious is constantly searching for a horizon or bearing in the otherwise chaos of stimuli. “In my drawing there are many directions to move in, many horizons. Yet as a whole there appears to be no one horizon. As a teenager I am staring into a mess of horizons trying to find the horizon. I am searching for an inner horizon and exterior horizon.”
As the CSW senior looks forward to life after high school, he is considering attending the School of the Museum of Fine Arts to which he has been accepted. No matter which higher education institution he enrolls next year, Will says, “In regards to pursuing art I would say art will always be pursuing me, so no matter where I end up or what I end up doing, art will be there too.”
He said that his time at CSW has prepared him well for his next steps in education and life. “A book found in the [CSW] pottery room –about fractals and chaos theory – changed my life and verified many theories I had been developing since childhood,” Will shares. “I have loved everything I've learned and explored in high school.”
The courses and teachers at CSW have exceeded his expectations, especially in art and chemistry. The opportunity for independent study, a hallmark of the educational process at the coed day and boarding high school, stands out for Will.
“I loved exploring chemistry and art during my independent. The conceptual drawing course was wonderful and pushed the boundaries of art for me also. All these moments are connected and should be seen as one, all equally important,” Will states.
The senior says that winning the American Visions award further encourages him to make art and ponder what art means in society. He plans to continue to pursue fine art and branch out into other disciplines after art school. “If all else fails,” he laughs, “I will go off and become a hermit and make paintings with peanut butter.”
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CSW—a gender-inclusive day and boarding school for grades 9-12—is a national leader in progressive education. We live out our values of inquiry-based learning, student agency, and embracing diverse perspectives in every aspect of our student experience. Young people come to CSW to learn how to learn and then put what they learn into action—essential skills they carry into their futures as doers, makers, innovators, leaders, and exceptional humans who do meaningful work in the world.