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Tidal Me A Winner

West Bloomfield High teen wins a top honor in the country's oldest art
competition for middle and high school students.

SHARON LUCKERMAN

Editorial Assistant

W

Top: Winning art piece, Tidal Me,
combines photography and computer graphics.

Above: West Bloomfield senior Lesley Serri with
her first art awards: covers of the Jewish News.

hen Abbott Middle School art
teacher Joyce Brodsky checked
the names of winners from
southeast Michigan from this
year's prestigious Scholastic Art Awards, she
hoped to find current and former West
Bloomfield students on the list. One name
she didn't expect, however, was her daughter's.
Lesley Serri, who never told her mother she
had entered, won one of two Gold Keys
awarded West Bloomfield High School stu-
dents.
Serri's piece, Tidal Me, a modern triptych
using photographs and computer graphics,
will travel along with other first-place winners
to the national competition in New York City
"Lesley's in good company," said Shelia
Lee, Wateiford Mott High School art teacher
and co-chair of the Scholastic Art advisory
board. Past winners of this contest, which
honors young artists and writers, include
Andy Warhol, Truman Capote, Robert
Redford and fashion designer Anna Sui, who's
from Detroit.
"Out of the 5,100 art pieces entered, 950
pieces won," Lee said, "and only 100 of those
received first place, Gold Key awards.
Lesley's art career began young. At age 7,

she won the first Jewish News children's
Chanukah art contest in 1990. Her art
appeared on the JN cover.
"The contest got me started in art," says
Lesley, 17, now a bubbly high school senior
who is considering a career in graphic arts.
"My mom put paper in front of me and told
me to enter the contest. I just started to draw.
It was a fun hobby for me,"
Lesley not only won that year, but took
first place in her age group the next two years,
and was tapped to do the JN Father's Day
cover in June 19, 1998.
When asked what's important to know
about her current art, she says, "I'm a Pisces.
I'm into water, shells, mermaids."
She also was into photography until she
couldn't get into a debate class last year, and
instead took a computer graphics class — the
category of her award.
"Lesley grew a great deal once she under-
stood the computer is just a tool to create the
art form," says her art teacher, Pam Groves. "It
eventually enhanced her work and allowed her
to be more creative."
Lesley's work, along with other first-,
second- and third-place winners in the local
Scholastic Art Awards, is on display until
Saturday, Feb. 24, at the Summit Place Mall
in Waterford Township on Telegraph Road,
north of Elizabeth Lake Road. El

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