Daphne Wong, who last year won the Junior Art Award, is leaving her mark as a senior, too. She has created a piece titled "The Path to Founders in Four Seasons” as part of the senior class gift to the school. 

The picture will hang in the Office of Student Life, and members of the Class of 2026 who contribute to the class gift will be invited to leave their signatures on the mat for the frame. The class gift is a monetary donation to the Loomis Chaffee Annual Fund. 

Acting senior class dean Jen Solomon came up with the idea. “We were trying to think about a way to make the gift feel tangible, meaningful, and represent the class,” Jen said.  

The idea, Jen said, was that the art would be Loomis-themed, made by a member of the senior class, and the first in an ever-growing collection that can reside in the Office of Student Life. “When students come back to visit for reunion or other events, they can come and see this piece of art with their physical signatures,” Jen said.  

The Annual Fund supports virtually every aspect of life at Loomis Chaffee from classroom and experiential learning to financial aid, faculty resources, residential life, arts, and athletics. 

Daphne’s piece depicts the Senior Path leading to Founders Hall, in watercolor, colored pencil, and dry pastel, and has been sent to be framed. 

“I wanted to do something that would represent not only Loomis but the senior class,” Daphne said. She said she also “very much appreciated the changing seasons, so I wanted to incorporate that element.” 

She said she first painted in watercolor and then used colored pencils for details and dry pastels for texture. Daphne started the piece in early April and went to the Richmond Art Center (RAC) about three times a week to work on it. 

Daphne has taken art classes all four years, exploring various mediums, which she said have allowed her “to have a larger view of art.”  

Her proclivity for art also has found expression in other areas of Daphne’s Loomis experience, including her involvement in the Global & Environmental Studies Certificate program. As a capstone project in the program, Daphne and Cathy Zhang teamed up to make plant-based paints, present about the environmental impact of regular paint, and give students the opportunity to paint their own pieces using the paints Daphne and Cathy created. Based on the prompt of reflecting on a favorite memory, experience, or place in nature, a collection of the participating students’ paintings adorned a wall in the RAC.