My piece depicts a character's imaginary world that is only visible to her in her reflection. I used watercolor in order to give the piece a more painted, whimsical feel, and I used bright colors in order to contrast her imaginary world from her monotonous, duller real world.

I wanted to do some sort of representation of American Patriotism, but with how diverse our communities are these days, I decided instead of doing the typical American family, I would do a family of immigrants, representing the many families who move to America everyday, and who are new to the culture and community of America. Throughout making this piece, I tried my best to make sure to incorporate every detail, small or big, as they all contribute to the meaning and feeling behind this piece. From the wrinkly clothes, the bright colors of red, white, and blue, the mother's excited expression, to the hands holding the American flag, these all help bring the painting to life, and to let the viewer notice the hint of admiration this family has towards the parade going on, with also their dedication to a new community that they are now a part of.

This art piece is an acrylic painting on canvas. It is actually inspired by a photograph I took while in Ranch 99 during the summer, with my younger sister and cousins. My cousins had finally come back down from their first year of college and after a year of not seeing them, we all, funny enough, went immediately to go buy snacks for all of us. I decided to do a painting of this image due to the nostalgia it gives me. I was always super close with my cousins though we talked less during their time in college and my first year of highschool core memories I always had with them always involved snacks. All four of us could actually finish a whole bag of chips in a 15 minute car ride, which always amazed my mom. One of my cousins was a really big snacker and coincidentally enough one of her favorites were choco pies. My mom was also always buying snacks for us. Food was weirdly enough, kind of our thing. I remember being extremely happy taking this picture, which again was my inspiration to do this painting.

This piece serves as a nod to the various factors that inspired me to draw as a child. I'm lucky to have had an amazing childhood, and I think it shows in my work. Growing up in Tokyo as a kid was the best experience I've had in my life, and a lot of the items and toys I owned were cute, colorful, and fun. I think being surrounded with all this positivity and art as a kid is the reason for my lifelong love of creativity. To show this, I incorporated real toys and drawings from my childhood into this piece, as well as things that I remember seeing trending at the time. (ex: stars/hearts/music notes on clothing, strawberry accessories, charms, cutely decorated donuts)

This art piece represents coming out of an abusive relationship broken and hurt but still trying to view yourself as graceful and beautiful as you can while being visibly and mentally torn down, having the person push you into positions that you didn’t want to be in figuratively and literally. I purposely chose not to color the artwork for the sole purpose of letting those of all kinds of abusive relationships be able to fill in those blanks of “color” and for them to be able to look at the artwork and see themselves and imagine themselves finally prevailing over and breaking free from the “puppeteer” the most important thing to me, when I make art, is to allow for everyone of all paths of life to be seen and heard.

It's a self portrait of me checking my makeup in the school bathroom. I wanted to reference how aside from painting, I'm also practiced at painting my own face regularly. To really hammer in the paint theme, I decided to only use primary colors, which are how I and many others started painting. I also wanted to create the effect of a statue with the dramatically lit face and blank eyes. I tried to make the hand, and every other physical part, including the neck, face, lips, hair, feel vastly different and separated from each other through color and texture.

This is first in a series of portraits of fellow teenagers with alternative styles and identities I have created in the styles of late 19th century portraiture.

This piece is loosely based off of a macro image of a pomegranate. I chose a pomegranate because of it's significance in Judaism. I chose to not make it so realistic, and stuck more with color and creativity. working with oil pastels allows my art to be free and flowy instead of focused on perfection.

This piece is based off a phot that I took of myself and recreated and modified using acrylic a point on canvas. This piece explores my personal struggle with identity, in relation to body image and the female beauty standard. Throughout art history since the Renaissance, the depiction of skin was associated with the creation of “life” on canvas. The dripping of the skin in the piece shows how the quality of this life can be deteriorated through the impossible journey of trying to meet the beauty standard and ultimately failing.

I wanted to explore the differences between the appearance of old money versus where it came from. I used the hand to represent the clean and gentle appearance of old money, layered in front of the feral dogs which represent the true aggressive nature of accumulating that wealth. The two are tied together by the pearls which represent the wealth itself.

I wanted to create a piece that reflected the wildfires experienced in my home state, California. I started by sketching out my final draft on Mixed Media paper. I then used a variety of Tombow markers to create the gradient from the light of the wildfires and added detalis of the fire with Prismacolor pencils and watercolor pencils. I then blocked in the tree shapes and foreground with dark brown and black Tombow makers. To create the bear silhouetted in front of the fire, I used Prismacolor pencils. I wanted to include the bear in the piece in order to represent our state animal, the California Grizzly bear. This piece means a lot to me because of how affected I was by the wildfires whether it be through having to wear a mask just to walk outside or by having my soccer practices cancelled due to the dangerous air quality. I hope that more awareness can be raised for the climate change issue and that we can work to prevent a further diminishing climate together.

I was inspired by paper models that artists made when designing stage sets: I was enthralled by the immersive, more lifelike quality that these models took on, while still being comprised of two-dimensional layers. When I made this piece, I wanted to combine this unique technique with my own experiences while traveling, and capture the European styles and history that I love inside a miniature world.

This piece is a self-portrait inspired by the surrealist movement. The blurred line between an inhuman jawbone and facial musculature represents my interest in bones and decay/regeneration in nature, as well as the inherent complexity of the human body. This complexity is further illustrated by the exterior, abstract exoskeleton that gradually loses anatomical accuracy, ending in a sort of parallel infinity symbol. The wasteland-esque landscape in the background depicts wide tuning forks, which are reminiscent of trees and are a nod to my obsession with music. I chose cooler colors for the background to contrast the focal point, which is mainly warm. I especially enjoy blues and oranges, which is a duality that is prominent throughout my work.

For a school assignment, I was asked to create a piece that depicted how humans depended on nature and vice versa (using skeletal anatomy and a triadic color scheme). Since I was a child, I was fascinated with how elements of nature resembled the rough shape of elements in a human body. I thought trees looked like the brain; the branches like nerves, the trunk like the spinal cord. Therefore, I unleashed my thoughts onto a smooth paper made just for colored pencils. My thoughts came to life as I replaced the spine and brain with a tree; this portrayed how humans rely on nature, and that nature is within us. To create this work, I studied the skeletal anatomy of a human to create the perfect, balanced proportions.

The entire process of creating this piece felt extremely meditative and valuable. The hours of methodically tapping with my chisels on the stone, the long hikes to find the perfect piece of wood, the time spent carefully sanding. The experience of creating this very abstract portrait of myself added so many hours of thought into my life. I often feel growing up in this modern age there is no time to think, I am constantly flooded with media, advertisements, and useless distractions that all keep me in a state of confusion and profound feeling of being overwhelmed. There is a climate of instant gratification that comes with all things and I often feel entitled to these instant results, even within my art I often times get frustrated and impatient and simply throw paint on something or quickly make something without putting much time and thought into it, that's why carving stone fully by hand felt like such a daunting task. The slow paced nature of this self portrait and every tap with my chisel gave me valuable time to think and form new ideas that I otherwise would not have been fostered. This helped me be far more intentional with what I was doing and why I was doing it.