Marblehead Festival of Arts Awards 2017 Scholarships

MARBLEHEAD, MA – Three aspiring artists won 2017 scholarships from the Marblehead Festival of Arts to pursue arts education.

Macayla Brock has won the Milton Bloom Student Art Scholarship Award. This award is for a student from grades seven through eleven. Brittany Ficaro has won the Art Scholarship, which is given to a graduating senior. And Victoria "Tora" Khrobostova has won a new award offered this year, also to a graduating senior, the Warwick Foundation Scholarship.

Both seniors are members of the National Art Honor Society and Gold Key winners in the Boston Globe Scholastic Art and Writing Awards program; each has won several other art and scholastic awards.

The Bloom Award, offered in memory of Milton Bloom, by his family, is a $500 grant to help pay tuition for a program in the arts. Eligible arts include crafts, fine arts, performing arts, and creative writing. The award must be used within a year of being received. This year’s recipient, Macayla Brock, has had a passion for acting since she was 7. She is particularly interested in becoming a screen actress and has performed in plays from children’s theater to Shakespeare.

This summer, Brock will use her award to attend The National Student Leadership Conference’s Acting Program at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. She also has a love for sewing and, like a good actress, costume design.

The 2017 winner of MFoA’s Art Scholarship, graduating senior Brittany Ficaro, plans to study painting at the College of Fine Arts of Boston University starting this fall. It started when she picked up a crayon at her grandmother’s house. She did not know then that she would fall in love with everything that makes art special. She began taking art lessons at Marblehead’s Acorn Gallery School of Art when she was eleven.

"Creating art has been my entire life," said Ficaro. "When I am not in the studio, I am often found spending time with my friends and family. I have a younger sister, Brianna, who has been one of my biggest supporters since the beginning."

Tora Khrobostova, winner of the Warwick Foundation Scholarship, will attend the Rhode Island School of Design. "Art has helped me communicate to my peers before I learned English and German," said Khrobostova, who was born in Russia. During her junior year, she studied in Germany on scholarship, due to an opportunity from the State Department.

As an artist, she has a strong interest in illustration and animation where, Khrobostova says, "Every symbol, every sound, every movement is there for a reason. Each scene portrays a specific emotion that the viewer feels; viewers are enraptured by the moment on the screen while shedding a tear of laughter or sadness." But, perhaps more important, she wishes to travel more to study the peoples and ways of other countries. Such exposure she considers "an interesting theme to also draw about."

Images via MFoA: Clockwise, Victoria "Tora" Khrobostova, Macayla Brock, Brittany Ficaro