Young artists to receive scholarships
A public reception will be held June 17 at the Rainbow Springs Art in Dunnellon gallery.
Abrianna Hart, 18, of Crystal River has won a $1,500 arts scholarship from Rainbow Springs Art in Dunnellon gallery. Hart plans to study musical theater at Florida Southern College. [Submitted photo]
Two area young women recently received a nod for participating in the arts when Rainbow Springs Art in Dunnellon gallery named them recipients of art scholarships.
A public reception for the scholarship winners, as well as for new gallery artists, combined with an after-hours mixer with members of the Dunnellon Area Chamber of Commerce, is set for 5:30 p.m. June 17 at the gallery.
Eve Chastek, 17, of Dunnellon, and Abrianna Hart, 18, of Crystal River each will receive a $1,500 gallery scholarship. Chastek is a recent graduate of Lecanto High School’s School of the Arts and Hart is a recent Crystal River High School graduate.
Chastek plans to study fine arts at the University of Florida in Gainesville and Hart, musical theater at Florida Southern College.
has won a $1,500 arts scholarship from
Rainbow Springs Art in Dunnellon gallery.
[Submitted photo]
Martha Pelot, chair of the gallery’s scholarship committee, said both winners were “a little shocked” to hear the news. She said the nonprofit gallery offers scholarships to “support the arts in our community and to support education in the arts.”
In her scholarship application, Chastek wrote about a recent experiment with AI. She decided to ask Chat GPT to create “a fine artwork using graphite pencil.” According to Chastek, she was seeing classmates and teachers use AI for various projects. She wanted to see how it would do when asked to design artwork. She said Chat GPT came up with several sketches, but none of them had “soul. There was nothing there.”
She said she chose one of the AI sketches and “I tore it to shreds. I changed it up.” She said she gave it a focal point. She also gave it a title: “Resistance.”
“An artist needs to be resistant against AI. It’s about overtaking the AI. The only way to complete it was to completely reimagine it,” she explained.
She said she doesn’t believe AI can succeed in making meaningful art because as humans, “We have the ability of critical thinking and of expressing emotions.” That’s nothing she feels machines or software can do.
The experiment left Chastek feeling “invigorated and empowered,” she said.
She especially likes abstract painting, which, she explains, “requires a lot of thought.” An artist needs to have a concept and reduce it to an abstraction. The AI abstractions were “kind of repetitive,” Chastek found. She suggests that abstract art, perhaps, is one of the more difficult kinds of art for AI to produce.
She said she is looking forward to college and “having art classes all day.”
Her application notes that she is a language student. She said her mother was raised in Russia and came to the U.S. when she was 25, so Chastek is fluent in Russian. She has also studied Spanish in school and now is focusing on Asian languages. She said Japanese is difficult. Perhaps in the future, she’ll also more thoroughly study language through a discipline like linguistics, she said.
She recently designed a video game, for which she wrote a script, used art images and composed music. And she was captain of the Lecanto High School Varsity Tennis team.
For those considering following their artistic dreams, Chastek advises, “Stay true to yourself. Your art is what you say about yourself. If you let it scare you, you won’t be able to express what you want to say.”
For Hart, the Rainbow Springs gallery’s scholarship is another of the arts scholarships she has won. The Valerie Players of Inverness recently awarded her and four other students scholarships for at least $1,000. They had to pledge they would study theater in college.
And that’s what Hart plans to do.
Was she surprised to receive another arts scholarship?
She pondered a moment and said that being in the performing arts, she has had to learn to be confident. So, her answer was, “I’ve had to learn to believe in myself, to stay true to myself. … I’m grateful. Absolutely.”
Hart has been onstage since she was 8 and has had leading roles in many school productions.
Musical theater, she said, “is a way to express myself in a way that’s very different from whom I usually am. I love singing. And there’s acting and dancing. It’s really a lot of fun.”
She said she hopes ultimately to be on Broadway and in movies. But Florida Southern College has ties with the Walt Disney Co. and, after college graduation, one of Hart’s first jobs might be performing on a Disney-owned cruise ship.
She said she advises others that, “It’s really challenging starting out. You may have moments of doubt and feel you might not be good enough. But everything happens for a reason. You have to be comfortable and confident in who you are as an artist and what you want.”
Both young women thanked the gallery for its help.
“With everyone so supportive, it means the entire world to me,” Hart said.
“I’m extremely grateful and appreciative that they reached out, that they like my art. … It’s a huge compliment to me,” Chastek shared.
Rainbow Springs Art in Dunnellon gallery is at 10816 Walnut St. To learn more, call (352) 763-4048 or go to rainbowspringsart.com
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