I made visual art to encourage young people to find hope by being outside in nature. Whenever I feel stressed or in a challenging time, being in nature can help give me hope. Hiking is not only good exercise but also good for your mental health.
Our entry is a painting with a quote about hope on it. We wanted to show that people can help others find hope instead of just showing ways of how to find hope. We felt that helping others can also help give yourself hope too.
Personally, I really struggled with my mental health for awhile. But ‘they’ were always there. They were my light. My guide. They helped me out of that hole, that darkness, no matter how much I pushed them away. I didn’t want them to be my light. I didn’t want a ‘they.’ But they never left. They stayed. They returned, and they worked harder than before. My ‘they’ were my light. My guide. My hope.
Over quarantine, I developed feelings of shyness and I found it hard to open up to people and new things. I felt very out of place, as if I was missing something in my life, for it was as though I was empty inside. But I eventually decided to open my bedroom window during one of my digital classes and, like magic, I felt free. Opening this path to nature allowed me to relax and realize the beautiful world we live in, and how even just a single breath of fresh air can connect you to endless, amazing experiences.
I decided to create this piece to represent the feelings of letting go. I have faced many situations where I have to stop and let go to move on and be happy. Everyone should know that no one is perfect and making mistakes are ok. I hope those who view my art piece find the courage in letting go of any tension they have kept within themselves.
My painting is based on when I had cancer when I was about five or six years old with Ewing’s Sarcoma. I was in the hospital for a week every other week and I was attached to this panda bear stuffed animal that I got from the gift shop on the hospital’s first floor. I brought the panda bear everywhere I went and it got me to the next day, which is why my painting’s title is named “Tomorrow.” In fact, I still have the panda bear by my bed today, and it’s still giving me hope.
“I created this piece to bring awareness in hopes that other people find art to express yourself. My piece of art expressed the beauty and color of art.”
“My piece shows a group of Asian Americans that are real people who have been victims of hate crimes in the U.S, both victims who have died, and those that have survived, in a courtroom in front of a judge depicted to be ignorant and dismissive of their injustice. I wanted to bring more awareness to the struggles the Asian community faces and how it gets ignored and how people will go out of their way to make excuses or turn a blind eye about it, rather than work to fix the problem at hand.”
“My piece was inspired by the idea of breaking through racial prejudice, using broken glass to symbolize what we see and what some ignore. The crashed window symbolizes an opening, breaking with past injustice. The bright yellow center is the hope of all people respecting each other’s rights regardless of their mental health status, race, or thoughts. There are some people supporting mental health by wearing wristbands with the hotline for mental health, someone supporting black lives, hope, and stop for hate crimes. It is about the diversity of people uniting and demonstrating justice for everyone.”
My illustration depicts “The First Lady of Physics”, Chien-Shiung Wu, as well as Tsung-Dao Lee and Yang-Chen Ning, two figures with significant contributions to parity violation. These individuals made a crucial contribution to physics by disproving the law of conservation of parity, outlining that the laws of physics must remain the same for two systems that are mirror images of each other. Lee, Ning and Wu all contributed to the conclusion that parity could not be assumed in all instances, particularly in weak interactions, however only Ning and Lee walked away with a Nobel Prize in Physics. Using the idea of two mirrored images behaving differently, I illustrated how the scientists were all crucial to the experiment, but only Lee and Ning were recognized/reflected. Wu would receive a Wolf Prize several years after the experiment, but it is no doubt that her contributions to parity violation were overlooked, exemplifying the gender bias that has been fostered not only in STEM, but also across the globe for several years. Wu was not only an incredible physicist, but also an advocate for equality in STEM, questioning if “…the tiny atoms and nuclei, or the mathematical symbols, or the DNA molecules have any preference for either masculine or feminine treatment” (Chien-Shiung Wu at MIT, 1964). Such instances of injustice can easily be excused as things of the past, but it is crucial that we acknowledge how gender discrimination has, and still does, prevail in the world.