This is a graphite drawing of layered spheres.

This painting portrays a sinking feeling I’ve been experiencing quite often recently; Feeling isolated.

Esta pintura representa lo lindo que puede llegar a ser la naturaleza y llega a reflejar lo hermoso de ella, La noche simboliza un simbolo de paz con una luz interior que la hace brillar, lo azul con blanco que esta en la parte inferior de la obra simboliza un lago lleno de vida y belleza de ese momento tan ilustrativo.

At what point do we detach from our surroundings?

I had fun with water color and it was based on the theme water life.

This piece was an assignment in which I was tasked to combine two animals to create a mythological creature.

Started with a pink canvas and the whole painting took 2 years to fully complete and get my ideas out.

This piece is meant to be a show of irony, because while skeletons are generally representative of death, the skeleton in this piece is simply enjoying life.

When I was in the third grade, my grandmother, who I rarely saw due to her living in Taiwan, was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. She had weeks left to live. I remember flying back to Taiwan during summer break to see her one last time. She passed the day I visited, and I was left with an empty, blue feeling that I didn’t know what to do with. A few days afterwards, my mom told me of the Japanese tradition, folding 1,000 paper cranes after someone has died could make one special wish come true. So I did fold one thousand of those origami birds for my grandmother. The day before her funeral we placed the cranes with her body, and I made my wish, which was for her to be happy and at peace in her afterlife. Ever since, paper cranes have held a special place in my heart, and I have all the steps of folding them memorized. They remind me of my grandmother, who has left a large impact on the person I am today. When making this piece, all I knew was that I wanted to honor her memory in some form. That’s where I got the idea for origami cranes, floating on a small, winding river, into a bright luminous light. The colors are meant to invoke a sense of melancholy, yet calming peace. That’s what I hoped for my grandmother and I hope now that my artwork expresses it as well.

Refugees share a unique, ongoing history. I decided to base my piece around the past and future of refugees, and their intrinsic connection. Through centuries of the human experience, people have fled their homes for different reasons; however, the unknowns they face, and the changes they undergo, are all analogous with a story of resilience and resourcefulness. The bright fabric of life entwined in their clothing; the insurmountable variety of refugees represented in a united obscurity; a mysterious figure wraps them up in an embrace. I dedicate this piece to refugees, like my mother and her family, who built comfortable lives for themselves in the US, and still–to this day–spare a thought for current refugee crises.

This work explores the nature of truth and how it can shift and transform as it passes through multiple iterations, perceptions and viewpoints. At the bottom of the mobile is an undistorted piece representing the pure, atomic truth, and each subsequent piece is increasingly distorted to demonstrate how the truth can become distorted and tainted by the biases of individuals and the media. The way the mobile warps the colored light suggests the fragmented understanding of the truth that we often possess. By juxtaposing projections of nature and news on the mobile, this piece invites viewers to consider how their perception of truth can be influenced by others.

This artwork explores the varieties of identity and self-exploration. This oil painting captures a young man that is gazing into a mirror, with his masculine features slowly forming into feminine ones. I have had a hard time "fitting in" and trying to be someone who I am not, living in a predominantly white community. "Reflections of Inner Beauty" encourages myself, and others to remember that identity is not confined and can be expressed in many ways. While doing this oil painting, I wanted the audience to capture the outcome of this painting. It is how we perceive ourselves and how the society perceives us.

Though I've been drawing and painting most of my life, a recent visit to an exhibit of Fredrick Edwin Church's paintings inspired me to shift my focus to very detailed landscapes. Since I was born and raised in San Francisco, I have been interested in the urban landscape. This nighttime scene was one that gave me the opportunity to explore new techniques in lighting and color theory.

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.