The claustrophobic inevitability of growing up is something that’s been nipping at my heels each day I get older. I know I’m not a kid anymore, but, at the same time, not quite yet an adult. The transition between sun-bathed childhood bedrooms and scarily uncertain adulthood leaves me feeling cramped in a once familiar space I’ve long outgrown.

In my household, there is a convergence of my family's cultures; Portuguese and Indian. Through observation I found a spice cabinet in my house that visually displayed something in my everyday life that was full of culture. The cabinet has traditional Indian spices and boxed powders alongside Portuguese spices. Just like we had the option to use different spices in our dishes, I have had the option to experience the coexistence of the two cultures, which is my inspiration for this artwork.

Holidays and other celebrations hold a special place in the heart of every culture, each one bearing its own unique rituals and traditions. Living in such a diverse country, I have come to really appreciate the spiritual power of holidays and wanted to express it in this painting. My painting portrays two Chinese women preparing a bountiful feast for the New Year, a momentous holiday celebrated by a vast and diverse population. Its message is to demonstrate the power celebrations and holidays have to connect people, even those of polar backgrounds. New Year’s, for example, is celebrated all around the world, from the Chinese Lunar New Year to European New Year’s Eve celebrations. Although people are connected more than ever with the advent of the internet and trivialized cross-continent travel, holidays still manage to maintain a magic to bridge divides, sometimes even better than those novel inventions. The piece goes about portraying the message by focusing on people. This is done through the use of color contrast, with a vignette formed by greys surrounding the warm, saturated colors of the food and people. Another method of emphasizing the people is through a difference in detail level. The hands and the face of the woman are more detailed compared to the food and dishware, further highlighting them. While the two women are not directly touching or in very close contact, they are connected by a mutual connection to the food they are making.

In this work, I tried to convey the struggle of being an Asian American with the juxtaposition of the American bill and the Chinese bill behind the red envelopes. Every Chinese New Year, my family gives put red envelopes to close family and friends, and I was inspired by my experiences with receiving American bills from my family in America, and Chinese bills from my family in China. I often find myself stuck between both parts of my identity, and ponder the question if I could be fully welcome the Asian part of my identity while also being American at the same time. Contrastingly, this piece also represents the ultimate embracing of my Asian American identity, as I’ve grown and come to realize that my identity being both Asian and American has shaped my personal experiences and connection with others around me.

I designed this piece to reflect on how someone's true soul can become hidden. The darkening of the rings from the inside out symbolize how the further one strays from their inner self, the more corrupted and untrue they can become. The rings were thrown on the wheel to remain smoothly symmetrical and polished. The clay rings were closed into hollow tubes to reduce weight and allow the rings to be suspended to create three dimensional movement. However, the heart at the center was hand built to maintain an organic shape.

As I meticulously shaped the flexible wood reeds into chrysalis-like forms to create the lamp, I couldn't help but reminisce about my science class and the awe-inspiring process of nurturing butterflies. The delicate transformation from reed to a sturdy frame symbolized the gradual but essential transition from childhood to adulthood—building a foundation strong enough to carry the weight of experiences yet delicate enough to let the essence of growth shine through. Layer by layer, I delicately applied the mulberry paper, letting it embrace the structure. Its gentle, soft luminosity captured the essence of change and growth, echoing the gentle warmth that illuminates our lives as we evolve. The melding of materials mirrored the amalgamation of lessons learned and experiences gained, creating a piece that embodies the grace and resilience inherent in nature's transformative journey. In this creation, the intertwining of artistry and organic forms reflects the beauty found within our own metamorphoses. Like the butterflies' evolution, this lamp stands as a testament to the quiet elegance inherent in growth—a reminder that life's journey, marked by its own stages of transition, is an ongoing process of becoming, forever shaped by the beauty of transformation and the resilience it demands.

This piece represents my relationship and struggle with legacy. The photos, uncovered from a dusty box in my grandfather's home, are what I fear I will never have. A happy, whole life like that of my mother, my grandfather, and generations before them. Being transgender, I worry I will break this chain that connects me to my earliest ancestors. This piece is a combination of pain and of hope, a visualization of my unknowable future.

To me, the Bay Area is a place I feel at home for the first time, being of Chinese descent and having lived in rural America previously. The number of Asian students at UC Berkeley makes it so you’ll often hear Asian languages on the street. It’s comforting. The Chinese dragon in my linocut print is graduating from college, which represents the many Chinese students who have gotten the education needed for their futures right here in the Bay Area. The Chinese dragon is a concept thousands of years old, so its image carries the legacy and pride of Chinese people, who have been through civil wars and attempts at colonization, and were poor until rather recently. In America, especially for Chinese students, it’s seen as a threat for immigrants to get an education here and return to their countries. My artwork moves away from that narrative and into the truth that immigrants are as deserving of graduation as anyone else, and we should celebrate their success.

This painting captures the beauty of the breathtaking mountains in Wyoming, a place that is dear to me. My mother's family lives in Wyoming and I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to see the natural beauty of Wyoming every summer and winter. The little town is surrounded by mountains providing stunning backdrops we always explore the mountains and wilderness it has become a cherished family tradition that includes hiking horseback riding wading in the creeks or enjoying the wildflowers. I love wandering through the fields of Indian paintbrush and other wildflowers. The scent of sage brush and pine trees fills the air. That with the snowcapped mountains on the horizon are all part of the magic of Wyoming. This painting is filled with these memories-each stroke reflecting Wyoming’s beauty and tranquility. My wish is to share the love I hold for these mountains with those who may not have seen their beauty. I hope that through this painting others can glimpse the beauty of the Wyoming mountains.

I created a piece of wearable art, specifically a choker necklace, to demonstrate the relationship between bandages and jewelry. Through the juxtaposition of the imagery of wounds and the adornment of the body I explored the relationship between the beautiful and the grotesque. By synthesizing the bandage and the beads, I constructed new meaning by portraying a wound as jewelry, allowing the viewer to reflect on what is part of their body and what is adornment.

Excluding the bulb and wiring, this fully functioning lamp is made entirely of single-wall corrugated cardboard which I cut, carved, shaped, and peeled. The lamp was inspired by elements of art nouveau such as the use of natural curves as well as flora and fauna motifs, which are reflected in the cylindrical edges of the lampshade, and the leaf-like carvings on the sides and top of the lamp. The leaf shaped cut-outs on the top of the lamp not only function as a decorative element when the light is off, but also project an abstract leaf pattern on the ceiling when the light is on. To make the lamp work seamlessly, I made the shade removable so that the light bulb could be easily changed. In addition, to help the lampstand sit stably, I carved a rectangular opening in the side of the base for the cord to pass through without impairing the lamp’s balance. Finally, I made sure there were a few inches of space from every dimension between the cardboard, which is flammable, and the incandescent lightbulb so that the lamp would not catch on fire, and the glue would not melt, shifting the pieces of the lamp out of place. Although using an LED bulb would have avoided these problems entirely, working with an incandescent bulb challenged me to develop my design skills and think creatively but also pragmatically, working around restrictions and ultimately creating both a beautiful and functional product.

My piece, titled "Wonder," depicts a young child clinging onto his mother's back, gazing out at his audience with curiosity-filled eyes. Even before starting to sketch, I found myself captivated by my reference photo, by the wonder in the child's eyes. He reminded me of my younger self, curious about everything in the world around me; from a dog barking on the street to a rainbow appearing in the sky after a light shower, many of these everyday occurrences for us, now, were once so new and fascinating to us as children. What changed? I pondered over this transformation from wide-eyed innocence to a more practical outlook on life as I sketched over the period of three days, each one an eight hour cycle of eat, draw, eat, draw, eat, sleep, repeat. The child's gaze, filled with such fascination and awe, became a portal through which I could revisit my own past, a nostalgic reminder of the time when I was eager to explore even the simplest of things. "Wonder" is not just a simple drawing of a child and his mother; it's a reflection on the universal journey of growing up and the inevitable transformation of our perspectives. Though the fragility and beauty of those fleeting moments may be difficult to rediscover, I hope that this piece invokes within the viewer that same sense of innocent curiosity about the world, serving as a reminder of the precious, ephemeral nature of childhood wonder.

I created this piece for my mother. She has always encouraged me to be creative and branch out of my comfort zone. Seven years ago, after her divorce she began to plant garden made entirely of native plants. Her garden is a constant reminder and inspiration to me about how you can turn difficult and challenging experiences into something beautiful. That's why the wings of my watercolor butterfly are painted and filled in with the same native plants I see in my California community and garden. I love butterflies, their message of transformation and rebirth reminds of that life is also movement and change, and we can choose to adapt in ways that are beautiful.

Through this piece, I wanted to explore the concept of memory in a way where young and pleasant memories, such as childhood, often become distorted, forgotten, even lost entirely when one reflects back to it in the future, emphasizing the effects of the comparatively bleak reality of growing up. Using charcoal establishes a monotone, old photograph-like setting, and the duality of black and white conveys the simultaneous presence and absence of the memory. The face of the girl may have been one of happiness, sadness, surprise, or many other expressions; by replacing her face with a gaping hole, the portrait becomes slightly unsettling, as the void challenges conventional notions of recognition and highlights the haziness of our past selves in a distant memory. Back then, what did I feel? What did I think? Who even was I? Questioning the boundaries of reflection and the mysteries that lie within, I invite the contemplation of identity through the duality of remembering as well as forgetting. By visualizing this feeling through the piece, I seek to evoke a shared sense of wonder about how well we truly know the little children residing within our memory.

My name is Katie. I have autism and struggle with speech. My mom and I communicate with speech (a little), sign language and spelling on a letter board. My mom helps me with typing because I can't do that yet. I attend a school in Menlo Park called Open Mind School. Before that, no one taught me anything, and definitely not art! I love art. Art is freedom. I don't have much freedom. My art teacher showed us a painting of a waterfall with rocks. I liked it, but wanted mine to be more colorful! There was energy in the water. I needed color to express the energy. I know what the colors should be, but sometimes my feelings about what I am creating influence my color choices. I like to do art because it allows me to express myself better than with words. Words are difficult. Sometimes impossible. Art allows me to express things I can't say in words.

For this piece, I chose to make the work a letter B to represent my name, Ben. I constructed this letter in a western font style because I wanted to have the piece reflect my love for the western style and scenery. I constructed a cowboy hat that I put on top of my letter, three western style buildings, bullet impacts on the back, a desert mountain, river and cactus on the interior of the letter, and I covered the entire piece with large and small scratch and wear marks. While constructing this piece I wanted to give it a worn and dirty look which I used the large and small scratches to achieve. The cowboy hat I also used a darker black glaze for the first layer removing parts and then three layers of a lighter black to give it a worn and used look. For the western town I included a mix of bright, dull, and varying colors to create a lot of variation and life while sticking to the western theme. The bullet impacts I glazed with a metallic bronze and the mountains with multiple colors including a black, brown, and tan that I removed and layered to bring more dimension. The river and cactus I used a green and light blue for to help bring focus to the interior parts of the letter.

This piece represents the occurrence of an overshoot where humans take away all the resources the Earth provides us until we pluck the last flower out. The hand and the surrounding is formed by sand which represents the population of 8 billion people that inhabit in Earth. The yellow daffodil represents the last hope and the future of our lives which will be stolen when all of nature's gift is taken away.

The feeling of drowning in pressure is a reality in the sport of water polo. I wanted to capture the tightness of this suffocating feeling and add the back layer to convey the loneliness of it. This feeling is not limited to water sports. Many teenagers feel as if they are drowning under the expectations of life and no one can understand. My hope is that we can be seen and viewers can relate, even for a split second, when they see this piece. My artistic process started with a thumbnail sketch and reference photo taking. The idea evolved into a sketch and blocking in colors. I first tried to block in the colors on the sketch with gouache. The gouache and the choice of reference picture weren’t working. The gouache didn’t sit the way I hoped it would. I had to make the executive decision to restart the piece. My idea was very strong, but the execution didn’t go as planned. I started over with a different reference photo, one that I felt the feeling of drowning was captured better and I switched to poster paint, which was still out of my comfort zone but I liked the look better. After finishing the main subjects painting, I started to add the elements around the face and the background. I used foam to add more depth. I also used CD cases and wooden blocks to give the background more distance from the main part.

I’ve always never truly knew who I am, and every time I thought I did, my view of myself would constantly change. This painting really helped me uncover this feeling with honesty. A difficulty I faced while painting was blending and shading the skin, hair, and clothes. As you can see, my face is covered with a Zinnia. Zinnia’s represent everlasting love, in the painting, it represents the fact that even though I may never know who I was meant to be, I love the way I change and experience different lifestyles. You may also notice text written around the painting, the text reads “who am I?” which connects to my confusing interchanging identity. I hope this painting helps inspire others to take their complicated feelings into meaningful paintings.

Even if I don’t have time for art in months because of school, I never love it more than when my hands are gray with graphite or colorful with paint. This is my very first realistic portrait as a traditional artist who’s been drawing since I was very small, which makes it very special to me. The man in the drawing is Tyler Okonma, known professionally as Tyler the Creator, and he is one of my best inspirations as an artist. His new wave of aesthetics and fashion was unique in the hiphop and rap scene, with his colorful pastel, odd, yet classy appeal and expression of his queer identity. Tyler often features portrayals of BIPOC in the typical European luxury in his music videos and clothing brand, he uses his music as an outlet of his creative and personal identity as an African American and a queer man in a typically homophobic environment to empower him and others around him. I associate some of my fondest memories with my friends with his music. I used to listen to him on walks home with my closest friends blended with the sound of our laughter. I never love it more than when his instrumentals, intermixed with classical music and his lyrical anecdotes fill my ears when drawing. I chose to draw him because of my admiration for him, his bravery, and how truly inspirational he has been in recent years.