Aisy Franciscovich captured a Long Island’s Best Young Artists exhibit achievement award for her 30x40 inch oil on canvas painting titled “Me, Myself & I.” The Huntington High School junior garnered a stipend of $100 for her spectacular artwork.
Ms. Franciscovich drew inspiration from Miriam Schapiro’s work titled “Berthe Morisot and Me.” The Huntington teenager was among a select group of young artists to win awards at the highly regarded exhibit at the Heckscher Museum of Art.
Huntington High School junior Aislyn Franciscovich.
“Miriam Schapiro’s references to Morisot in her work, ‘Berthe Morisot and Me,’ inspired me to find my own connections to the 19th Century artist. In ‘Me, Myself and I,’ I conveyed my life during the past two years of the COVID pandemic. I related to Morisot’s quest to create meaningful art despite restrictions and barriers. Morisot’s restrictions included access to painting venues due to her gender and my restrictions included isolation from friends/family and public spaces due to COVID, as well as the art-making restrictions I face due to the tendonitis in my wrists.”
Ms. Franciscovich has been working closely with Huntington High School art teacher Kristin Singer and the result speaks for itself. The teenager is also one of the top students academically in the Class of 2023.
“Like Schapiro, I am drawn by the idea of women’s craft and the sanctuary it provides,” Ms. Franciscovich said. “I connected with her use of patterns and colors to display commonplace activities and the beauty behind them. The portraits and self-portraits located within my piece offer another dimension into my pandemic life by divulging into a visual record of my art during that period, as well as glimpses at optimistic escapes from the hours spent in my room. In my work, I created a light-hearted multiple figure self-portrait painting about my time in isolation. I hope that viewers are first drawn to the whimsical aesthetic, but after a reflection they see the sadness and loneliness that resulted from the barrier of COVID restrictions on teenagers.”