More than 60 IUSD students were nominated for the OC Register’s Artist of the Year Awards. These students were selected as nominees for their talent, technique and heart.
IUSD’s nominations span into each category, which includes theater, dance, instrumental music, vocal music, film and TV, media arts and fine arts.
Each year, junior or senior high school students across the county can either apply for, or a teacher may submit a nomination to be recognized for their excellence within their respective art disciplines. Based on the most recent data collected by the California Department of Education, 77,122 juniors and seniors were enrolled in Orange County in the 2024-2025 school year, indicating that this year’s class of nominees represents the top 1.2% of all upperclassmen in the county.
Following this initial nomination, a panel of arts educators will choose 16 semifinalists in each discipline to move on to a round of in-person interviews with arts professionals and arts faculty from Orange County universities. The semifinalists will be announced on April 19.
This year’s nominees by discipline are:
Dance
- Avery Brehmer, Portola High School
- Seraphine Chen, Portola High School
- Xinni (Jessica) Lyu, Portola High School
- Jiayi Pan, Portola High School
- Chloe Thompson, Portola High School
- Zurie Tran, Portola High School
Theater
- Aniruddha Babu, Portola High School
- Peter Cooke, Portola High School
- Sama (Sky) Dadash Zadeh, Portola High School
- Cori Dudley, Portola High School
- Chloe Im, Portola High School
- Elizabeth Kennedy, Portola High School
- Luciana Pa, Portola High School
- Ellie Pan, Portola High School
- Benjamin Wu, Portola High School
- Grayce Burke, University High School
- Aydean Eskandari, University High School
- Helen Han, University High School
- Shyli Slakmon, University High School
Instrumental music
- Kai Fishburn, Portola High School
- Sooho Cho, Northwood High School
- Allison Oh, Northwood High School
- George Xie, Northwood High School
- Sean Yu, Northwood High School
Vocal music
- Ansh Balasubramanian, University High School
- Shine Kim, University High School
- Rina Nelson, University High School
- Isaac Sarkar, University High School
- Giuliana Torquato, University High School
Film/TV
- Amy Wadsworth, Irvine High School
- Helen Han, University High School
- Esther Yoo, University High School
Fine Arts
- Rishith Allam, Northwood High School
- Borong DuanMu, Northwood High School
- Hannah Gu, Northwood High School
- Ji Woo Kaelyn Hong, Northwood High School
- Reisa Iwai, Northwood High School
- Alyssa Jummani, Northwood High School
- Chloe Lin, Northwood High School
- Sophia Mia Paredes, Northwood High School
- Hoshino Wang, Northwood High School
- Jiyoung Yun, Northwood High School
- Kelcie Fan, Portola High School
- Beyza Gunaydin, Portola High School
- Jasmine Khaligov, Portola High School
- Catherine Li, Portola High School
- Paris Sharp, Portola High School
- Katelyn Wong, Portola High School
- Junting Zhang, Portola High School
- Lisa Zhu, Portola High School
- Salla-Des Bosworth, University High School
- Chase Byer, University High School
- Ali Panahi, University High School
- Elaine Pang, University High School
- Marina Zive, University High School
- Henna Ali, Woodbridge High School
- Polina Larina, Woodbridge High School
- Louisa Lepera, Woodbridge High School
- Ria Rajguroo, Woodbridge High School
- Mars Rehbein, Woodbridge High School
Media Arts
- Kai Fishburn, Portola High School