Young Artist Draws on Talent for Award

Even as a small child, Raul (Rudy) Hernandez always liked to draw spaceships and robots. His interest in space and astronauts continued after he began formal training in art, discovered the high-tech designs of video space games, and later entered the special program for creative and performing arts at Chula Vista High School.

Now one of Hernandez’s watercolors is part of a traveling national exhibit titled “The Art of Science.” It is one of 17 works selected from a nationwide competition for high school students, and only one of two from California. The exhibit opens Monday at the Reuben H. Fleet Space Theater and Science Center in Balboa Park.

Futuristic Design in ‘Space Explorers’

The 18-year-old 1987 Chula Vista High School graduate won with a creation titled “Space Explorers,” a futuristic design with astronauts, large spaceships and robots fronting a hill that recedes into deepest space.

“This was a competition tailor-made for Rudy,” said Fred James, Hernandez’s instructor last year in the advanced design studio course at Chula Vista High. “Much of his work has dealt with things in outer space, with futuristic buildings, so when I received notice of the competition, I said it had Rudy’s name written all over it.”

The contest began last year and is co-sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the New York Academy of Sciences.

The New York Academy has for several years sponsored a regional contest in which students entered art inspired by science, said academy art coordinator Joelle Burrows in an interview.

Science as Seen Through Artworks

“It occurred to me that it would be interesting to give this mandate to all young artists, to have kids express their interest and views of scientific issues through works of art,” Burrows said. “And so we worked out a joint effort to sponsor the contest.”

Entries were judged by several staff members and directors from the academy, the Science Week coordinator from the National Science Foundation, the director of the IBM Gallery of Science and Art, and a director from a major New York art museum. The academy and the science foundation also co-sponsor the showing of the winning entries at museums across the country.

The quiet, soft-spoken Hernandez hopes for a career in either animation or aerospace design. He expects to join the Army soon, where he will receive experience in graphic design, then go on to college at a specialized art school, such as California Institute of the Arts in Valencia.