Family, friends and nearly 300 members of the community gathered at LeMoyne Arts for the opening of the 38th Mahaska Whitley Student Exhibition: High School Art and Senior Portfolio Competition on March 6. This celebrated annual event gives high school students throughout Leon County the opportunity to display their artwork in a professional gallery.
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There were 129 young artists who participated this year in an eclectic display of artwork ranging from ceramics, paintings, sculpture and drawings to costuming, fiber arts, digital art, and photography. This year, 21 Leon County High School students are receiving a total of $7,100 in awards and college scholarships made possible by generous community support. Parents and friends captured pictures of the artists, celebrating their remarkable achievements.
This annual event provides an opportunity for high school students from across Leon County to gain recognition for their hard work and talent, and be encouraged to develop a lifelong love and engagement in the arts.
Founder Mahaska Whitley, esteemed former Leon High School art teacher and art department director, together with LeMoyne Arts’ founding Executive Director Dick L. Puckett, envisioned this exhibit and competition as a way to inspire local young artists to further their arts education.
LeMoyne works closely with high school art teachers to coordinate this annual show, and recruits local arts professionals to serve as judges. Works are judged on originality, professional quality, and aesthetic quality. Students in the Senior Portfolio category also submitted an artist’s statement and selection of artworks to be evaluated for scholarship consideration. In this fair and equal process, judges do not know the name of the student, their school, or any identifying Information.
LeMoyne is thankful to this year’s panel of judges; Annie Booth from Florida State University, Dr. Nan Liu and Harris Wiltsher III from Florida Agriculture & Mechanical University.
The exhibit features four categories of student work, with multiple winners in each category except for the Founder’s Award, which has one artwork personally selected by Founder Mahaska Whitley.
Senior Portfolio Artist Award winners receive college scholarship money and winners in the other categories receive gift cards for art supplies intended to support their continued creative endeavors.
The exhibit is open to the community until Saturday, April 5, so come out and support the talents of our local young artists. The LeMoyne Arts Gallery, 125 N. Gadsden St., is open to the public from 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. For exhibits, events, classes and more, visit lemoyne.org.
The winners
The 2025 Mahaska Whitley Student Exhibition Winners and their artwork are as follows.
Senior Portfolio Artist Scholarship Awards
Marina Stolley Villanueva (SAIL) Matt Callahan Memorial $1,000 “Into You I See”
Dallas Maynard (SAIL) WestScott Construction $1,000 “In the Manner Of”
Sophia Calvert (SAIL) Founder’s Scholarship $1,000 “Bite”
Haylie Carver (SAIL) Ann Kirn Memorial $1,000 “Alexus”
Liliana Pittman (Lincoln) Mad Dog Construction $500 “Driving Blind”
Summer Wade (Lincoln) Capital City Bank $500 “Never the Last Supper”
Olivia Lefils-Roberts (SAIL) Ron Sachs and Gay Webster Sachs $500 “Vexation”
Yohan Hopgood (Lincoln) Capital Eurocars $500 “HE!ST”
Zyra Ward (FSUS) Aylstock, Witkin, Kreis & Overholtz PLLC $500 “Exhausted Melt”
Founder’s Award
Emmalin Starnes (Leon) “Ava”
General Artist Awards
Laila Alexander (Chiles) “Not Perfect”
Jiya Patel (FSUS) “Draconis”
Jurzi Williams (FSUS) “Break Every Chain”
Violet Ashley (Lincoln) “Lilium”
Niko Echeverry (FSUS) “Judgment/Release”
Antonia Wollmerstaedt (FSUS) “Kaeferchen”
Marisol Cervantes (FSUS) “Hyphenated”
Zyan Ramos-Claudio (FSUS) “Isla del Encanto”
Emerging Artists-Awards
Riley Baker (Chiles) “The Abyss”
Sarah Satterfield (Leon) “Elizabeth”
Elizabeth Vigil (SAIL) “Untitled”
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: LeMoyne celebrates Tallahassee’s young artists at Mahaska Whitley exhibit
Reporting by Special to the Tallahassee Democrat / Tallahassee Democrat
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
