More News

Like most kids, Da Rong "Daulton" Kao grew up playing with Legos. He'd stack them this way, that way, build things, see how they looked. But unlike most kids, Kao never quite gave up on stacking blocks.

"I'm fascinated with space and volume," Kao said.

Kao, a Thomas S. Wootton High School senior who spends his afternoons at the Visual Arts Center at Albert Einstein High School in Kensington, has stacked his way into the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts youngARTS grant competition, one of 150 finalists to be chosen from a pack of 7,000 dancers, musicians, writers and visual artists.

"Here at the Visual Arts Center we look at that as the Super Bowl of high school arts competitions," said Kao's teacher Michael Piechocinski. "It's a very prestigious award."

As a finalist, Kao could win up to $3,000 in scholarship money from the NFAA, Piechocinski said. The program is also the only avenue to earning the Presidential Scholars in the Arts designation, and 50 of the youngARTS finalists will be named for that honor at a symposium of all finalists to be held in Miami Jan. 13. Kao and his peers will all be flown by the NFAA to Florida for the event.

Piechocinski said all his students enter portfolios in the contest, which raises the quality of work for everyone from the VAC, bettering all of their career and college prospects whether they're finalists or not.

"It gives them a bar to strive for and by reaching for that it brings the level of their portfolio very high," Piechocinski said.

Kao said his selection as a national finalist left him "pretty shocked."

"I wasn't expecting to be one of the finalists because everybody at the VAC is really strong."

But Piechocinski said it was not much of a surprise to learn that Kao's work had risen to that level. A teacher can open the door, Piechocinski said, remembering a proverb he likes, but the student must walk through it.

"He's one, he'll run through it and he'll look back and say, hurry up and catch up," Piechocinski said.

For example, Kao took the Advanced Placement Art test his junior year and got the highest score possible. Piechocinski said it's rare for a junior to even attempt the test.

Having completed the two-dimensional AP test, Kao looked for a new challenge and began his first-ever three-dimensional sculpture over the summer. He cuts blocks of wood into shapes and stacks them until he "finds something that looks good," Kao said.

"(I like) making something that's structural," he explained.

Jane Walsh, another of Kao's teachers at the VAC, described Kao himself as structural.

"Daulton is a very determined and organized person, and even though I don't think he knows what he wants to be, he's very determined," Walsh said. "He's pretty tenacious."

Kao said he's toying with going into graphic design, or perhaps architecture, which was his two-dimensional concentration as a junior. He would like to attend the Maryland Institute College of Art or the Rhode Island School of Design.

As for tenacity, Kao said it's just a matter of taste, so he'll fix a piece until it's right.

"I always think if I don't like it, why should others like it?" Kao said. "I have to satisfy myself first."

The NFAA honor has satisfied his mother, he said, who moved with him to Rockville from Taiwan in 2001 to "have the American Dream."

Kao said art was not a topic of instruction when he was in Taiwanese school settings, where he said "you can't really have your own imagination." His artistic pursuits were largely inherited from his father, who enjoyed drawing for fun. He said his art teachers here, both at the VAC and at Wootton, were also instrumental in shaping his development as an artist.

"I couldn't have done it without them," Kao said.

He said his parents, both college professors in Taiwan, "didn't really want me to pursue" art, but his accomplishments have changed their minds.

"Now they realize it's another way to live, a more interesting way."