Click click click. The orange fruit dropped into the glass as junior Hannah Driks captured its motion on camera. The result of the photograph: a hyper realist drawing and a trip to Washington, D.C.

“I was not expecting to win this [Congressional Art Show], and when I found out I almost cried,” Driks said. “It was amazing.”

The Congressional Art Show was organized by Congressman Sam Johnson for high schoolers in the Collin County area. Eighty-four people entered the competition and Driks’ piece was voted for the top prize.

Driks’ piece will be displayed in the Capitol building of Washington, D.C., for a year, and Driks gets to go see it in a tour of the nation’s capital with her family.

“I have never been to D.C. before, and I am really excited,” Driks said. “My family and I were planning a trip there this summer, but we couldn’t go. Now [we have this] great opportunity. I can’t believe I am going up there [for] a ceremony and everything.”

Driks also wants to see the National Art Gallery, one among many sites.

“I am looking forward to seeing the White House and the Capitol Building, and I think I get to go inside Sam Johnson’s office and talk to him for a little bit, so that’s exciting,” Driks said. “There’s [also] a Holocaust Museum to see up there [that I want to see]. There’s a lot to see, and I am really excited.”

Before she had even entered the competition, Driks had made the piece to experiment with hyper-realism in her IB Art class.

“I really like IB Art; it is really creative, and it lets you express yourself instead of just telling you what your next project is going to be,” Driks said. “You get to create it on your own. When you have a vision, you stick with it the entire year. So you are free to do whatever you want, which is really nice. I get to experiment a lot.”

Driks describes the effort put into her piece, and how her art teacher, John Garrott, helped her in her work throughout IB art this year.

“[Mr. Garrott] likes to push you out of your comfort zone a lot and so at the beginning of the year,” Driks said. “I was just drawing in black and white a lot, in pencil, and he was looking through my book one day and told me to check out Chuck Close, who was the artist that inspired me to do the hyperrealism. I was kind of stuck and he motivated me to create [my art piece].”

Another person who influenced her work was her father, who is a chemist.

“I admire my dad because he always encourages me and tells me that I can basically do anything, and he is very well rounded like I am,” Driks said. “ I really look up to him.”

Driks said she wants to pursue a profession in science, particularly chemistry, and she feels in many ways that a scientist is an artist.

“You have to be creative to be a good scientist or someone who researches new things,” Driks said. “So I feel like in a way, art is tied into chemistry. I like chemistry because I like to work with my hands, just like in art, so really like working with chemicals and putting different things and seeing how they work, kind of like art, where I use different tools to create something new.”

Driks wishes to incorporate more science into her art pieces. After a year in IB Physics, Driks said she wants to include physics into her pieces.

“In the future, I [was] thinking that next year in art, I was going to try to incorportate physics with my artwork so different kinds of color is what I would base my art work off,” Driks said. “I wanted to try dispersion with the prism. It would be cool, and I am going to experiment with that definitely.”