Students from the Bermuda High School for Girls (BHS) recently won a clutch of top awards in the independent schools section of the Annual Stoker Spring Arts Festival held at Bishop's College School in Quebec, Canada.

Of the eight pieces of work entered by BHS senior school art teacher Mrs. Amy Evans, five were singled out for honourable mention and 12-year old Heather MacDonald won the Junior Prize for her oil painting of Apples.

Mrs. Evans says that she is especially thrilled with the success of the Senior Department students: "I have taught them since they first came into the senior school, so this is wonderful news.'' She expects Janice Maughan, 16, one of those receiving Honourable Mention in the competition to get the highest grade in this year's International GCSE examination. Janice, together with two of the other award-winners, Stephanie Pratt and Sara Graham, were also awarded free membership in the Bermuda Society of Arts after the annual Schools Exhibition at City Hall.

Honourable Mentions were also awarded to Theresa Pantry and Andrea Franklin.

Also selected by Mrs. Evans to compete were Robyn Semos, 15, and Cara Malloy, 11, who received certificates of participation.

Organiser of the Arts Festival, Mr. Brendan Trower, said that Mrs. Evans' confidence in the ability of her students to compete on an international level was well founded. He said the judges were particularly impressed with the individualistic style, "excellent'' grasp of basic art concepts such as colour, structure and composition and showed good taste in the choice of subject matter.

This is not the first time that BHS students have been successful in overseas competition.

In 1990, another of Mrs. Evans' pupils, Corina Spalding, had her bronze sculpture of Gandhi and the Sacred Cow placed on permanent exhibition in the garden of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, on Fifth Avenue in New York, as part of their Artists of Peace series.

Mrs. Evans, who has taught art at BHS for five years and before that spent ten years teaching at the Bermuda College, is also one of Bermuda's leading artists who has exhibited and sold her work in the US and Britain, as well as Bermuda.

Her bold and colourful watercolour and monoprint impressions of Bermuda's marriage between nature and architecture are well represented in Bermuda's corporate collections, including the Bank of N.T. Butterfield & Sons Ltd., Underwriters Ltd, and Grotto Bay Hotel. Her watercolour of Evening, St.

George's, was purchased by Prudential Insurance of New Jersey for presentation at their annual conference held in Bermuda last year.

Mrs. Evans is also well known for her batik work and she was commissioned to design the official banner, worked in applique and embroidery, for the Bermuda College.

She was also one of the 13 artists selected to represent the Bermuda section in the Annual Summer Show by the Royal Society of British Artists in London's Mall Gallery last year.

ART AWARDS -- Mrs. Amy Evans gives some practical advice to three of her senior pupils who recently received awards in a Canadian arts festival. From left, Sara Graham, Theresa Pantry and Robyn Semos.