Sketchbook
Frida Kahlo: A Ribbon Around a Bomb”
― André Breton, The New York Times, May 22, 1992
Finished Works
Who am I?
Scholastic Drawing & Illustration Gold Key
In my figure drawing class, it suddenly struck me that no one was depicting the models as they truly were--wrinkles, stretch marks, and all. They were mentally Photoshopping out imperfection just as we do with our Instagram accounts.
But these were artists. If they refused to represent reality as it was, who would?
That’s when I decided to draw my heroine’s stretch marks, and this one addition captured more attention than any of my other “perfect” works. People wanted to know “the meaning” behind the stretch marks, and I remarked that there didn’t have to be any meaning behind something that depicted actual human beings. The girls who came up to me loved this. People who had never before spoken to me suddenly were drawn to what I had done.
I don’t think we need to ignore truth in a quest for perfection--it just makes all of us feel more insecure.
Thus, Who am I?, a drawing in graphite and colored pencil, represents our struggle to discover who we are amidst the barrage of media and advertising messages, the pretense of social media, and our own “lostness.” In the darkness, my faceless heroine has wrapped herself in a protective fetal position, her very feet contorted inward as she tries to make herself as small as possible to disappear. Meanwhile, the messages of whom she is and should be swirl like congested freeways around her disconnected head, and as she responds to each, her body stretches and contorts to meet everyone’s expectations--as evidenced by her stretch marks.
Or, they could just be depicting her as she is.
But these were artists. If they refused to represent reality as it was, who would?
That’s when I decided to draw my heroine’s stretch marks, and this one addition captured more attention than any of my other “perfect” works. People wanted to know “the meaning” behind the stretch marks, and I remarked that there didn’t have to be any meaning behind something that depicted actual human beings. The girls who came up to me loved this. People who had never before spoken to me suddenly were drawn to what I had done.
I don’t think we need to ignore truth in a quest for perfection--it just makes all of us feel more insecure.
Thus, Who am I?, a drawing in graphite and colored pencil, represents our struggle to discover who we are amidst the barrage of media and advertising messages, the pretense of social media, and our own “lostness.” In the darkness, my faceless heroine has wrapped herself in a protective fetal position, her very feet contorted inward as she tries to make herself as small as possible to disappear. Meanwhile, the messages of whom she is and should be swirl like congested freeways around her disconnected head, and as she responds to each, her body stretches and contorts to meet everyone’s expectations--as evidenced by her stretch marks.
Or, they could just be depicting her as she is.
The Many Faces of Jane Doe
One day, I was looking around my classroom when it hit me I didn’t really know any of my social media “friends.”
This epiphany inspired “The Many Faces of Jane Doe,” an acrylic painting of a girl with many faces and empty eyes who presents her identities to the world, which in truth lack color and life. Her faces are empty blue masks, the color of sadness, showing there is little substance behind the faces she shows the world because she has come to value social media likes, comments, and followers over real-world connections. It’s as if our collections of digital affirmations are worth more because they are written in social media stone.
To reveal the truth of this fallacy, in a wash of anonymous streaky blue, disembodied eyes symbolizing the gaze of others look anywhere but at Jane Doe, revealing that all her “friends” do not truly see her or care about her, for what lacks substance fails to capture the soul.
This epiphany inspired “The Many Faces of Jane Doe,” an acrylic painting of a girl with many faces and empty eyes who presents her identities to the world, which in truth lack color and life. Her faces are empty blue masks, the color of sadness, showing there is little substance behind the faces she shows the world because she has come to value social media likes, comments, and followers over real-world connections. It’s as if our collections of digital affirmations are worth more because they are written in social media stone.
To reveal the truth of this fallacy, in a wash of anonymous streaky blue, disembodied eyes symbolizing the gaze of others look anywhere but at Jane Doe, revealing that all her “friends” do not truly see her or care about her, for what lacks substance fails to capture the soul.
The Pacific Ocean, 2040
The world is my muse. I used to hate long car rides when I was young, but now, I savor them. With Rad Museum’s “Dancing in the Rain” pouring into my ears, I gaze out the window at the wide, wonderful world.
A field of yellow grass becomes The Pacific Ocean, 2040, an acrylic painting, a desert of cactus-sized water droplets swirling with orange koi fish become a cry that if we do not protect the only inhabitable planet we have, our freshwater supply will shrink into drops of water in a desert. There is a strange beauty to the swirling water droplets, rife with wriggling koi fish, but also a dark message that we need to mend our ways.
A field of yellow grass becomes The Pacific Ocean, 2040, an acrylic painting, a desert of cactus-sized water droplets swirling with orange koi fish become a cry that if we do not protect the only inhabitable planet we have, our freshwater supply will shrink into drops of water in a desert. There is a strange beauty to the swirling water droplets, rife with wriggling koi fish, but also a dark message that we need to mend our ways.
Tree of Technology
Scholastic Painting Silver Key
While driving through Taipei, I am assaulted by neon lights screaming for my attention. The lights become Tree of Technology, an acrylic painting in warring primary colors that depicts the Tree of Life’s branches as wires of a tech maze we cannot escape.
Beneath the tree’s roots, an iPhone grows with carnival-colored icons of the many faces we wear that are all the same. The green leaves, which begin as lush, transform into colorful neon skeletons of leaves like glaring advertisements that sell nothing. The people are also disembodied, laughing Carnivale masks whose joy is empty. As the painting descends, the faces become more and more pixelated until they are disembodied dots on a screen.
Beneath the tree’s roots, an iPhone grows with carnival-colored icons of the many faces we wear that are all the same. The green leaves, which begin as lush, transform into colorful neon skeletons of leaves like glaring advertisements that sell nothing. The people are also disembodied, laughing Carnivale masks whose joy is empty. As the painting descends, the faces become more and more pixelated until they are disembodied dots on a screen.
The Nazification of Education
I used to love to read. When I was in elementary school, I read three books a week. I would even read while crossing the street. With my nose in a book and my black and hot pink Heelie Wheelies, Mom would roll me along.
My bibliophile tendencies died in middle school, when the teacher one day announced we were free to interpret literature any way we wanted as long as it was her way. We knew this as when test day came, there was only one right answer--hers.
Math, too, toppled in my esteem when we lost points for arriving at the right answer--only in a different way than the textbook dictated.
It was only in art class that we were encouraged to be original--to dig deep inside ourselves to tell the world explosive truths they maybe didn’t want to hear--but if we were skilled enough, people would listen.
Thus, in the acrylic The Nazification of Education, a young girl rises from the Pool of Possibilities, green with growth and potential, but only one grey cement path trudges through her empty eyes. There are others, the ones she eventually learns not to see--the swirling white mist, the worlds like bubbles that float by her head--and the pink hand that reaches for them, only to be pulled back by the dire blue one.
What is copied and pasted is hurled into her head as if it were an empty receptacle as a fountain of potential pours from her ears--disregarded because she must follow ONE truth--the teacher’s.
Thus, my painting reveals we’re surrounded by inspiration we fail to access because from the time we are young, we are told straying from what the people in power think is equivalent to failure.
My bibliophile tendencies died in middle school, when the teacher one day announced we were free to interpret literature any way we wanted as long as it was her way. We knew this as when test day came, there was only one right answer--hers.
Math, too, toppled in my esteem when we lost points for arriving at the right answer--only in a different way than the textbook dictated.
It was only in art class that we were encouraged to be original--to dig deep inside ourselves to tell the world explosive truths they maybe didn’t want to hear--but if we were skilled enough, people would listen.
Thus, in the acrylic The Nazification of Education, a young girl rises from the Pool of Possibilities, green with growth and potential, but only one grey cement path trudges through her empty eyes. There are others, the ones she eventually learns not to see--the swirling white mist, the worlds like bubbles that float by her head--and the pink hand that reaches for them, only to be pulled back by the dire blue one.
What is copied and pasted is hurled into her head as if it were an empty receptacle as a fountain of potential pours from her ears--disregarded because she must follow ONE truth--the teacher’s.
Thus, my painting reveals we’re surrounded by inspiration we fail to access because from the time we are young, we are told straying from what the people in power think is equivalent to failure.
Where I Am Now
Mom is laughing at me again.
“Ni kan qi lai dai dai de,” which means “you look empty-minded” in Mandarin.
But I’m not empty-minded. This acrylic is Where I Am Now--immersed in a world of ideas--peaceful, joyful, and free.
In our culture, we admire the person who commands the room, disregarding the contributions of introverts. And if you think about it, since the beginning of time, from Jesus to Mohammed, wise men have gone out into the wilderness alone and come back with ideas that change us.
This is my wilderness--my sea of ideas in which I bathe daily so I can paint the world in new ways so others see things differently.
So when you see someone who’s quiet, don’t think we are floating around with empty brains. It could be we’re creating.
“Ni kan qi lai dai dai de,” which means “you look empty-minded” in Mandarin.
But I’m not empty-minded. This acrylic is Where I Am Now--immersed in a world of ideas--peaceful, joyful, and free.
In our culture, we admire the person who commands the room, disregarding the contributions of introverts. And if you think about it, since the beginning of time, from Jesus to Mohammed, wise men have gone out into the wilderness alone and come back with ideas that change us.
This is my wilderness--my sea of ideas in which I bathe daily so I can paint the world in new ways so others see things differently.
So when you see someone who’s quiet, don’t think we are floating around with empty brains. It could be we’re creating.
Girl on the Table
Scholastic Drawing & Illustration Silver Key
I am the first year of Generation Z, the demographic born into an age of high-tech communication, multiple mobile devices, a sea of social media, and constant connectivity.
I was in first grade when the first iPhone came out. They were so rare they were status symbols, and by the time I was in second grade, I had my little hands on Mom’s and was in heaven. Soon, tag became playing Temple Run with my friends, and in fifth grade, I made my first social media account.
It made me feel like a grown-up. My sister, whose ten years older, had one, and I admired her as any little sister would. And because I could post anything as if it were an open diary, it held the glamour of being the opposite of restrictive school.
But this seeming freedom came at a price. Soon, I was counting my likes and followers (whom I’d never met in my life) in an endless race for fake popularity, and just as 1980’s French philosopher Jean Baudrillard predicted, the digital representation I posted of myself became more real to me and my friends than my real self. Only because I was an artist, I knew it.
In the colored pencil drawing Girl on the Table, a girl lies on the operating table, her head cracked open by plastic take-out knives that symbolize her plastic identity. Her head is shaved along with her femininity while colorful social media tube feeds pour into her open head as she lies silent in the spotlight, allowing all this to happen. In fact, she paid for it to happen.
I hope Girl on the Table is a ribbon around a bomb, the kind of art that makes people realize the impact of their choices. Because of confirmation bias (our tendency to disregard all facts to which we disagree), art is our only salvation because it has the explosive power to change our minds.
I hope Girl on the Table does.
I was in first grade when the first iPhone came out. They were so rare they were status symbols, and by the time I was in second grade, I had my little hands on Mom’s and was in heaven. Soon, tag became playing Temple Run with my friends, and in fifth grade, I made my first social media account.
It made me feel like a grown-up. My sister, whose ten years older, had one, and I admired her as any little sister would. And because I could post anything as if it were an open diary, it held the glamour of being the opposite of restrictive school.
But this seeming freedom came at a price. Soon, I was counting my likes and followers (whom I’d never met in my life) in an endless race for fake popularity, and just as 1980’s French philosopher Jean Baudrillard predicted, the digital representation I posted of myself became more real to me and my friends than my real self. Only because I was an artist, I knew it.
In the colored pencil drawing Girl on the Table, a girl lies on the operating table, her head cracked open by plastic take-out knives that symbolize her plastic identity. Her head is shaved along with her femininity while colorful social media tube feeds pour into her open head as she lies silent in the spotlight, allowing all this to happen. In fact, she paid for it to happen.
I hope Girl on the Table is a ribbon around a bomb, the kind of art that makes people realize the impact of their choices. Because of confirmation bias (our tendency to disregard all facts to which we disagree), art is our only salvation because it has the explosive power to change our minds.
I hope Girl on the Table does.
Girl on Fire
Scholastic Painting Honorable Mention
I remember waking up to my sister screaming and shattering glasses against the walls, her emerging from the shower with blood dripping down her razor-cut legs, and the fear that pervaded the house for years.
In this darkness, art was my sanctuary, the only friend that could silence my thoughts. I was so young no one thought they needed to explain what was going on to me. It was like living underwater where you can’t hear anything. You see a flash of light, but you don’t know if it’s a mirage.
My acrylic Girl on Fire is the painting of whom I’ve become because of art--a young woman who dares to gaze outside the box even though it’s “forbidden,” who tries to experience life from different perspectives so I understand others, and whose creativity flames out despite society’s repression.
Because of art, I’ve always felt the need to create instead of consume, think for myself instead of thinking like the herd, and live instead of exist.
As Oscar Wilde says, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” Art is the North Star that guides me, my Polaris, the reason I breathe. It began as the water that quenched my anxiety from the monsters that haunted my childhood. Then, it was what I did to breathe. Now, it is the future I create with my hands.
In this darkness, art was my sanctuary, the only friend that could silence my thoughts. I was so young no one thought they needed to explain what was going on to me. It was like living underwater where you can’t hear anything. You see a flash of light, but you don’t know if it’s a mirage.
My acrylic Girl on Fire is the painting of whom I’ve become because of art--a young woman who dares to gaze outside the box even though it’s “forbidden,” who tries to experience life from different perspectives so I understand others, and whose creativity flames out despite society’s repression.
Because of art, I’ve always felt the need to create instead of consume, think for myself instead of thinking like the herd, and live instead of exist.
As Oscar Wilde says, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” Art is the North Star that guides me, my Polaris, the reason I breathe. It began as the water that quenched my anxiety from the monsters that haunted my childhood. Then, it was what I did to breathe. Now, it is the future I create with my hands.