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Pinecrest resident and New World School of the Arts
Senior Danny Ruiz was recently selected Florida Secondary Art Student
of the Year and National Secondary Art Student of the Year by the
National Art Education Association.
Some of Danny Ruiz's Artwork
Ruiz is an accomplished visual artist who attended
Pinecrest Elementary and the Southwood Middle art magnet program
before going on to the New World campus.
Danny Ruiz
Ruiz just barely made the deadline, learning about the
contest the day before all of the submissions were due.
"My teacher suggested that I enter, so I turned
in the slides that I had on me and put an essay together then and
there," Ruiz explained. "I found out just a couple of days
later that I had won the Florida competition and I had to use the same
material as Florida's representative in the national contest. It
wasn't even what I thought was my best stuff, but somehow I won that,
too."
Just recently, Ruiz was selected for participation in
the Arts Recognition and Talent Search Competition by the National
Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts.
ARTS is considered one of the 'big two' art contests
for secondary school art students, along with the Scholastic Art
Awards. Only 125 students are picked for the ARTS competition and only
25 of those are visual artists.
"As a part of the program you get to attend ARTS
Week, which includes workshops and lectures and things like
that," Ruiz said. "You win a minimum of $500 for being
selected, but one person receives $3000, the Presidential Scholar.
That person is picked at the end of ARTS Week."
Ruiz, who primarily paints still-life art, says he
likes to find the beauty in ordinary, everyday things that the world
often overlooks.
"A lot of people ask, 'what makes you paint this
or that?'" Ruiz said. "But, it's really a matter of doing
whatever comes out of you. I like painting still-lifes because I feel
like I can draw whatever I see. I'm particularly interested in the
kind of stuff you might find in an attic, things you might normally
overlook. There's a simple, pure beauty to those things that I can
appreciate and that I like to accentuate."
At New World Ruiz has a 4.0 GPA and participates in a
numerous extra-curricular activities. He is a member of the National
Art Honor Society and the Environmental Club and has begun playing the
guitar. He also laments the fact that he wasn't able to play baseball
in high school, though he did play in the
Howard Palmetto Khoury League. But, he says he understood early on that you
have to make some sacrifices to be a successful artist.
"Mrs. Poger at Pinecrest was instrumental in convincing me to go to
Southwood, something that I didn't particularly want to do at the
time," he recalled. "But, I'm very grateful for that now.
Sometimes I try and picture myself doing other things, but it always comes
down to the fact that nothing else would be nearly as satisfying to me as
what I'm doing now. It's almost like you have an obligation to yourself,
that you don't want to waste the talents that have been given to you."
Ruiz is considering attending the Maryland Institute, College of Art,
Washington University in St. Louis, the Rhode Island School of Design and
Cooper Union next year among many others.
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