Year 11 Visual Arts boys, Sebastien Mills (11/KL) and Jack de Lacy (11/ME) were recently accepted into the prestigious National Arts School HSC Intensive Studio Practice Program. With over 800 applicants each year and only 50 places on offer, it’s a stupendous achievement for both boys to be accepted. ‘Black and White’ sat down with Jack de Lacy to find out more about his journey and what he hopes to gain from the course.

Collating everything necessary for the HSC Studio Practice Course at the National Art School was very much a collaborative effort. Without the initial support of Ms Hannah Chapman and Mr Andrew Thompson to enter an application there is no way I would have even thought it to be an appropriate undertaking for myself. With this strong foundation of encouragement I met with various members of the arts department as often as twice a week to sort out my application. 

Together we primarily tried to find the works I would submit. I decided to enter two photographs made outside of school and two mono-prints made at school, as I was trying out for the photography and printmaking courses. This proved no small task as we looked through several thousand images, before selecting the final few. From here I went about making two new prints straight from the original photographic negatives and scanning then reprinting my mono-prints ready to be entered. 

I’m extremely excited to have been selected into the dark room photography course as analogue photography has been a fixation and hobby of mine for nearly two years. I hope to get out of this course an intimate knowledge of developing photos so that I can enhance my images. With a strong technical ability, I hope to facilitate conceptual growth in my work both for the HSC, but also into university and beyond. 

We wish the boys every success as they enter this course. Congratulations Sebastian and Jack!