Congratulations to Shreya Jothiraj and Claudia Comeau, winners of this year’s Sable Island Through Art scholarship!
Friends of Sable Island Society was delighted to once again offer up to $2,000 in scholarships – $1,500 for the first-place entry, with a possible $500 second prize to a deserving runner up entry. We invited Nova Scotia students completing Grade 12 in 2026 and pursuing post-secondary education in the fall to apply. We have offered an entry-level scholarship since 2013 to educate, inspire, and foster stewardship for Sable Island National Park Reserve. The winning entries are shared through our website and social media channels to broaden public awareness.
This year we chose a visual art theme. Students were invited to submit an original piece of artwork inspired by Sable Island. The medium was intentionally open to encourage broad participation and creativity. Alongside the artwork, students were asked to submit a short written artist statement explaining: their connection to Sable Island; what the piece represents; and, why protecting Sable Island matters to them. Submissions were judged on originality/creativity, research/accuracy, emotional impact, and interpretation/content.
Meet the Scholarship Recipients
Scholarship winner Shreya Jothiraj was a Grade 12 student at Halifax West High School. Her entry, titled Held in Time, was selected for its meaningful and effective symbolism. We wish her much success as she undertakes the Medical Sciences Progam at Dalhousie University this fall.
Claudia Comeau, as the deserving runner up, was a student at Park View Education Centre in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia. Her entry, titled A Body of Salt and Sand Shifting, was selected for its expressive choreography that provides a unique physical interpretation of Sable Island’s inhabitants and history. Claudia will be studying biology at Acadia University this fall towards a Bachelor in Science degree.
Thank you to our Artist Judges
We welcomed Briana Corr Scott as one of the artist judges for the scholarship submissions. She is an author and artist who lives near Peggys Cove, Nova Scotia, Canada. Her world is filled with islands, wild horses, seals, birds, tangled weeds, fog, and the sea. She paints from life and as she walks along the Atlantic coast near her home. She takes these sketchbooks full of words and images, and returns to her studio to write the stories that turn into poems, picture books, animations, patterns and paintings. The subject of her work is an exploration of images that she pulls from her “happy island”, a place in her mind where she goes to finalize her images and stories. You can learn more about Briana at www.brianacorrscott.com
Huge thanks also to Kaitlin Bauer, our other artist judge who took the time to give personal feedback to Shreya and Claudia. Kaitlin contributed three pieces of Sable Island-inspired artwork for one of our fundraisers in 2023. She has been influenced by both the east and west Canadian coastlines and now works out of her home studio in the Annapolis Valley, where her artwork continues to be an intensely meditative and therapeutic outlet. She aims to reflect the resiliency of their rural landscapes and the wild and untamed spirit of the animals that inhabit them.You can learn more about Kaitlin at kaitlinbauer.com
Please find the winning entries below.
Held in Time by Shreya Jothiraj
Artist Statement
This piece represents Sable Island as both beautiful and fragile. Shaped inside an hourglass, the piece not only shows the natural, contained balance of the ecosystem, it is also meant to show how time flows within it and how quickly such places could vanish. Protection matters because the urgency is clear now more than ever.
In the upper bulb, I used watercolour to portray the unique and overall interconnected life of the island, from the bright Atlantic waters, free movement of the wild horses, seals, the Sable Island sweat bees, and the native grasses and dunes. At the neck of the glass, I wanted to create a direct bridge between the viewer and the island’s inhabitants with the horse’s eye, providing a glimpse into the long history they hold within them and their place as witnesses to their own changing environment of the present. A main focus of this piece is the sand. With the use of acrylic paint and baking soda, I was able to add a textured sand element as a way to really highlight the core of Sable Island through its name, meaning the “island of sand”. As the textured sand drips down, the lower bulb acts as a reminder that nature is never static, and what exists tomorrow depends on the choices we make today.
The hourglass portrays how the island is a vulnerable and finite resource, and protecting it, as symbolized by the hand holding the hourglass, is a way to conserve the “colour” in our rapidly dulling monochromatic world. Although I have never visited Sable Island, it is part of something larger to me: the need to protect places that exist in the world. The world belongs to all of us; therefore, it is our responsibility to care for it.
A Body of Salt and Sand Shifting by Claudia Comeau
Note: the dance piece was choreographed to “Omega” by Ardie Son. We recommend listening to this music using your favourite player while watching the video.
Artist Statement
Sable Island is in a constant state of shifting, and being entirely reshaped by the wind and tide. My dance draws from these intense, yet beautiful transformations. With this piece I explore the island not as something fixed, but instead as something full of meaningful life. It is a place that bends, but never breaks, whilst showing its fragility and durability simultaneously.
The versatile movements were very intentional in this dance, as I included small gestures like, my fingers quickly crawling away from my body, to symbolize the insects that sustain the island’s ecosystem, continuing cycles of life even as others end. Expansive jumps, and turns were used to represent the gravity of the storms that are responsible for the changing of the island’s shape. Finally, I choreographed sharp movements to embody the very thing the island is most known for -the horses- and their wild unpredictable motion.
I feel connected to this unimaginable place through the idea of ephemeral moments in time, where all that is occurring is life. Its shifting sands mimics the way our body and identity is never static. My choreography is used to intentionally create the feeling of ups and downs, all to tie into the island’s flux as it erodes and renews.
I am intrigued in protecting Sable Island, because its unsteadiness is what makes it stand out in my eyes. As I prepare to start my Bachelor of Science in Biology, I’m eager to learn many new things about the world we live in and the lives of the wildlife we share it with. Sable Island clearly shows how we should let ecosystems thrive on their own, rather than letting humans control them.
With my piece, I hope to have illustrated Sable Island’s beautifully imperfect shapes and way of movement, and I want others to consider our responsibility to protect areas that teach us to be okay with the constant changes in life, instead of trying to shape them.