I started doing visual art around twelve years old, but started to take it more serious as I learned more about my mental health. I use art to express feelings that are sometimes hard to feel like anger or sadness. I also use my visual art as an extension of my political views and exploring how African people can be dedicated in fine arts.. I believe that my art can inspire social and political change. Most of the art that I create is based around African subjects, as an appreciation of African features that aren't highlighted in a lot of popular art that are based in eurocentric features.

Pumpkins are the best this time of year

This was one of my first times drawing a semi-realistic drawing with real subjects. After finishing it, it's safe to say I'm very proud of it, hence the title. However, that isn't the only thing that pride ties into - I'm proud of my friends (the subjects of the drawing) and that I was able to meet them at the start of high school, I'm proud of my artistic style, and I'm proud of being a young Vietnamese woman in this society. The vibrant depiction of friendship has feminist undertones told through my color choice and the different symbols in the background. In essence, the drawing celebrates the diversity and empowerment found in the bonds of love and support shared among friends.

My playing card started off as a self portrait. I used different materials to evaluate my identity. I wanted to express how there's still parts of my identity that are uncertain.

I wanted to explore the relationship between creation and destruction: destruction to create something new, and how things we create destroy themselves.

In this painting, I am struggling to fit into my cherished childhood clothes—specifically, a beloved yellow sweater and pink polka dot leggings. These were my favorite articles of clothing from my childhood, providing personal significance to the artwork. Additionally, piles of tried-on colorful children's clothes surround me, adding a feeling of desperation. It captures the conflict between my desire to revisit the past and the inevitable reality of having outgrown it. Essentially, the painting encapsulates the universal challenge of wanting to preserve childhood innocence while grappling with the acceptance of having outgrown the past.

I find myself in music, I find myself in lyrics, I love live music. I love hearing the artist's emotions through their lyrics and rhythms. Concerts have become one of my favorite outlets and I find this interest illustrating itself in my own artwork. This piece displays me looking up at the venue sign of Gracie Abrams's show with lyrics from her song “The blue”. The background is what I feel best represents what the song feels like when listening to it. I took aspects of what the song colors feel like with the factor of me physically coming “out of the blue.” This piece goes into my overall theme for my portfolio this year of “girlhood”; factors of overwhelm, love, and memories are big aspect of this years work for me as my childhood is coming to end. This piece takes all three of these and implements them into one piece that represents a big part of me and my feelings.

Originally, this piece was started as nothing more then another prompt for a monthly challenge, day number 15, Arrows. Yet, it ended up evolving into a social commentary piece on the nature of our environments, that there are certain predetermined paths, our "one way" road, due to constraints, including (and not limited to) race, class, gender, and sexuality. The piece itself, titled One Way, (refering to the road sign that indicates as such) represents that struggle in fighting against these constraints, and how it can become nearly impossible to travel in a different direction without being met with opposition, or The Arrows. I chose to depict the person’s form as seemingly stiff, in the effect that the arrows are not met with a retaliation in their body, as I wanted to make in clear that the pain of these arrows was more of a mental struggle, as opposed to a physical wound. The arrows come at their legs, to keep them from traveling further, their stomach, to somehow guilt them into going back, and most notably, their heart. To break down their being. And I chose to counter this with the person’s tiny arrows as they keep their gaze forward and their arm reaching out. A slow tear trickling down their cheek pulling their emotional turmoil forward. This piece marked the start to my fasination with social commentary through artwork, and it carries the inspiration for more pieces to a similar theme of societal constraints and legal signs.

My Ivy is a representation of myself; the ivy is a plant that I resonate with. Like an ivy, I strive to help others, cover them from harsh conditions, and at the same time I'm supported by them.

Nature has always been an inspiration for my artwork, but this time, I wanted to personify her. I immediately thought about the concept of Mother Nature and a graceful, emotional pose that viewers could connect to better. In the image, I show Mother Nature creating and interacting with her surroundings. She creates the night sky as her black hair sweeps across the piece and she holds up mountains delicately like a dress as she blends into the lake that she is one with. The red of her dress complements the vibrant green hills and the purple in the lake softens the blend between the complementary components. In her vulnerability, I wanted to symbolize human vulnerability and convey that just like people, nature is vulnerable too. The artwork is made in a way that the Mother Nature is at a balance between human and Goddess. She is not above all the hardships that comes with life, after all she experiences it all too.

This piece captures the New Year's Eve. My dad took me and my siblings to meet the rest of my family in his hometown. During New Year's Eve I got to experience and see important traditions such as seeing my aunts running on the street with a suitcase, while seeing my cousins hit the piñata while I waited for my turn. All of that while fireworks were Illuminating the sky as if it were daytime. Mexico is often described as a surrealistic country, and from my experience that's legit, I tried to capture how surrealistic this moment was by adding floating piñatas and using saturated colors. That New Year's Eve was the last one I spent in Mexico and it's one of the moments I cherish the most when I feel homesick. The title "Metamorphosis" is a reference to the way everything can change in a year; that was the last time I spent time with my family since I moved to the U.S.

My artwork explores the duality of the word "mask." In my piece, I wanted to convey both the literal and figurative meanings behind this word- one masquerade-style butterfly mask and the masking of emotions. The butterfly mask, a symbol of theatrical disguise, embodies the literal facet of masking, representing the concealment of true emotions behind a facade of beauty and enchantment.

I used a photo as reference and made a sketch layer, I then lowered the opacity of the sketch layer and started working on line art. After I was done with the line art I started coloring using the colors from my subjects color palette. I used multiple different brushes in the procreate app. The subject is my original character, Lilly, and her dog, Bowser.

In 2018, my father had a brain AVM, an arteriovenous malformation, when I was in third grade. My family and I were unaware of what an AVM was at the time and the impact this would leave on our lives as I never anticipated the suffering of a loved one at such a young age. Ever since, my family and I have aimed to spread awareness about this rare but deadly disease to protect themselves and their loved ones. My father’s brain AVM drove me to become a Youth Ambassador for the Aneurysm and AVM Foundation (TAAF). TAAF provides a safe space for everyone to share their voices and experiences. In my piece, I depict the longing of the voices of those affected by rare diseases to be heard. I believe that everyone's story is important, whether they have personally encountered a rare disease or not. By shedding light on these experiences, I hope to inspire empathy, raise awareness, and create a community of support for those facing the challenges of rare diseases.

I created this piece as a commentary on the state of our world. While there is a lot that may be wrong in the world, it is possible to find a reason and a way to not only survive but thrive. There is both beauty and hope if one is willing to push through and persevere.

When thinking about what to draw, hearts came to mind. I think art is about expressing your interests, or trying to convey what you are feeling without actually saying anything. To me, love inspires what you do and make, and whatever you do and make to express yourself is a form of art. To simplify my subjective purpose of art, I drew hearts to symbolize love.

This piece was made to give a calming, welcoming energy in respect to the Buddhist Gods. I spent 2.5 months making this piece, using a combination of techniques and glazes to produce the final product. I gave it to my mother for her birthday, as she is a figure of strength and warmth in my household, and I felt this sculpture best represented her and her influence on my life. The dimensions are about 9.5x12x10.5 (LxHxW).

My makeup pieces range from original ideas to inspiration from others. I am able to express myself through the creative forms of makeup. This makeup looks process lasted 5 hours. For this look I used the following techniques: shading, blacking out, contouring, highlighting, perfecting, 3-dimensional detailing and more. For shading I would need to layer face paint to create dimension and afterwards lightly brush eyeshadows on top to give a greater depth and add brighter colors. To make my eyes look "bigger" I added white to a portion of my under eye and apply individual eyelashes to give a cartoon effect. To create the stitches, I drew the stitches on a curve to add the effect of them digging into my skin as if they were real. As well as adding white to the high points of the stiches to give it a 3-dimensional look. With additional shading around the stitches and portions of skin being held together by them. I blocked out my neck with black face pain to give the effect of a smaller neck to give it another aspect of a cartoon.

It’s a self portrait of me (Hana) laying in a body of water. There’s a golden butterfly over my eyes.

I love cars and space, so I decided to make my favorite car drive along a rainbow highway.