WORK #1: Carbon Memory
INTERNATIONAL ART OLYMPIADS SILVER MEDAL [MEDAILLE D'ARGENT] 2025
PROCREATE
Carbon Memory explores the interdependence between humanity, the future of AI, and climate change. Technology is becoming more and more advanced at a rapid pace, which can make us feel intimidated. This piece also explores what it means to be human and have humanitarian values in an evolving society with means towards apathy. Initially, I was going to illustrate something that one could blatantly see as climate change, the typical fire-on-the-earth drawing or an object melting. However, incorporating technology and our potential future is always something that I wonder about. I want to say something more layered, something about the future we are creating through emitting greenhouse gases and to what extent that humans will lean on technology, something we fear can take over us. And when that future comes for the worst, our human life and experiences are something to look back on.
PROCREATE
Portrait of a Girl was one of the first digital art pieces I completed. In the beginning, I did not look forward to start learning how to draw digitally on Procreate. As an artist, I work well with texture and knowing that the material I am using corresponds with a specific texture. For example, I am used to traditional art since I recognize the slightly rough and wood-like feeling of sketchbook paper. I use color pencils often because I recognize the hard, triangular shape of Staedtler.
Using the first-generation Apple Pencil meant that I was feeling this round, plastic pen across all 'mediums' that were simulated in Procreate. It was unsettling.
In this piece, you can see how I experiment with different textures, especially for the hair. I tried Procreate's brush that was named 'Fine Hair', imagining that I would use an acrylic, wooden-handled brush to create that texture. I ended up using the texture acrylic instead of 'Hair'. However, I've learned a lot since then, knowing how to ignore what I imagine a texture 'feels' like and focused on what it looks like in terms of the whole drawing.
WORK #1: LACK OF PROTECTION
PROCREATE
Lack of Protection is one of my works in progress for the Ocean Awareness competition. The square-like void represents our most common smart device, the smartphone. Most of us have screen protectors, a metaphor I used to represent censorship. You can vaguely see an Instagram post of the City That Never Sleeps, New York City. The mesmerizing lights blind us to the true consequences of light pollution and other man-made factors. This is what we think the future looks like. However, when that protection [censorship] is broken, our future can look sustainable. Humanity can eventually coexist with nature and the organisms along with it. I want to express the idea of rejecting a concrete jungle.
WORK #2: OPERA HOUSE/OUTDOOR AMPHITHEATRE
ARCHITECTURE
The Summer Design Academy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst inspired me to create my building after I designed a cabin retreat for my final presentation.