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Conté Crayon on Paper by Nicole Moran
2013 D. Bradley Smith Art Purchase Award Winner

The Artwork

Photo of the Artist Disney calls the engineers behind their most creative work "imagineers" -- they live at the intersection of technology and imagination. Steve Jobs famously said that Apple lives "...at the intersection of technology and liberal arts." These are just the kinds of places that Nicole Moran intends to inhabit. Nicole will study at the University of Buffalo this fall, majoring in both Mechanical Engineering and English, but the artistic sensibilities she has cultured in her time at Brighton will continue to play a role in her work, as her interests are many and varied.

Nicole's passion for the arts began with dance -- she started as a two-year-old! -- and she trained in ballet with professional aspirations until a back injury took her off the stage in her sophomore year. She diverted her creative energies into fine art and took every art class BHS had to offer except ceramics. Her art teachers found her "...self-directed, focused, and steady," praising her ability to bring original ideas and determined follow-through to each project. Her teachers chose her work to represent Brighton in the New York State Art Teachers Association show at Artisan Works, and she designed the BHS yearbook cover in both her junior and senior years.

The work selected for the D. Bradley Smith award is a still life that Nicole created in Studio Art II, and it was part of the five-piece portfolio that she submitted to the AP Board. She chose the subject -- a broken mannequin's hand -- because she liked the challenge of representing the contrasting textures of the brittle hand and the soft fabric of the backdrop, and the piece gave her an opportunity to work with the soft fluid delicacy of charcoal, a medium that she particularly enjoys.

Nicole's talents extend to music as well; she has studied both piano and violin since she was a pre-schooler. How this kind of fluency in the arts connects to an engineering education may not seem obvious at first glance, but one has only to look at the genius of a Steve Jobs or Walt Disney to find others who have explored this intersection with spectacular results. We look forward to seeing where Nicole applies her talents!

Image provided by Debra Burger
Story developed by Jim Kane

June 20, 2013


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