There are few people who are both artistically and athletically gifted. Senior, captain of the CHS varsity girls soccer team, sculptor and illustrator Francine Phillips, is one of those few people.
Currently, Phillips is in both Advanced Studio Art and Advanced Ceramics. She has been active in the arts community of CHS since her freshman year.

“Frannie is such a creative thinker and art creator,” Art Resource Teacher Brendan Roddy said. “She understands that art communicates meaning and message and she strives to speak her mind with her work. She is a positive spirit and creative risk-taker in the studio.”

Not only does Phillips spend her time creating art, she has been on the CHS girls varsity soccer team for the last four years, the Bethesda club soccer team for the last eight and was named to the Washington Post’s first team all Met and National Soccer Coaches Association of America‘s All-American team. Recently, she became an All-American athlete as well.

“I sacrifice a lot of my social life, but the trade off is spending my time doing the things I love and am passionate about, so I can’t complain,” Phillips said. “Napping helps keep me sane to balance all the rest.”

Last year, she entered Strathmore’s Totem Sculpture Garden competition for advanced ceramics students and had her piece, ‘Body Wild,’ was selected to be displayed at the Grosvenor-Strathmore Metro station along with 60 others by the walkway.

“It was my design, my sketch, my idea, but then I had a team of senior Garrett Jacobs, alumni Matt Longshore and Alex Conway, and it was basically what I worked on for the entire last year,” Phillips said. “I really liked working with my teammates because we became really good friends and we would go out and celebrate after we finished. We still keep in touch, and it was just a blast working with them.”

Her interest in art stems from the influence of her mother, Melissa Phillips, who was an art teacher at Denver Academy, a private school in Denver, CO, for ten years.

“As a parent, I can offer support and encouragement and provide her with the tools she needs,” Melissa Phillips said. “Frannie has always been very artistic. I don’t think she’s ever been without a sketchbook.”

Another source of inspiration for Phillips is Banksy, an England-based graffiti artist. She admires how he turns simple things into statement pieces with a twist of darkness. She cites Banksy as a source of her progress in her own art.

“I love seeing how my art has changed and grown over the years,” Phillips said. “I’ll clean my room and find a drawing from freshman year and know exactly why I drew it and how I felt in that moment. Art captures so much more than we realize, especially when we’re the only ones to imbed our thoughts into it.”

For the future, Phillips has committed to play division one soccer for the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and plans to pursue a degree in interior design.

“Frannie is one of the most amazing people ever. She just excels at everything she does,” senior Ciro Chechile said. “Whenever I need a shoulder to lean on she is always there. One time, when I was having a really bad day, she brought me a card and a notepad with happy notes.”