Plop, a drop of water falls in the middle of my forehead. I’m at an amusement park, it’s almost evening and the sky has keeled over into grey clouds, forewarning the promise Florida doesn’t say on the tourism pamphlets. Tropical storm, a slower start than usual. It has been a few days at my grandfather’s condo and my eyes already know to look for cover. Small gift shop, children’s jungle gym, already the water is coming faster as khaki-wearing dads with Hawaiian shirts scoop up laughing children from the top of play-sets which are quickly becoming water slides. Paper cups and snow cones drop onto the pavement, making the puddles rainbow for a moment. I look for my grandpa, and I see my two brothers clinging to his arms while his head twists around searching for me. Rain is pounding down now, drenching us, the park exit is a quarter mile away, but too many families with their squirming kids are already huddling under the gift shop overhang, so I yell and point towards the path back. It is going to be fruitless, we’re already soaking as the droplets shower down, but the rain is warm at least. My brothers run wildly in their flip flops, but my once-sensible sneakers catch water and become pools as I run through the rain, water up to my ankles with a gross squelching sound, so I stop just for a second and begin to untie them like it’s a matter of life and death. I hear a thunder strike in the distance, perhaps it is. Running faster now, barefoot in the park- a strange, silly kind of freedom, but in the seconds I took to remove them my brothers raced ahead so I have to make up for the lapse. It seems Florida theme parks stretch the whole state, with how far you can run and still be a mile from the gate. By the time I catch up to my brothers, I am soaked head to toe with water dripping from my nose. I look and see that they have stopped. Near the entrance to the park there’s a cafeteria pavilion and I see all three of them in line, my grandpa ordering food. He glances back and waves for me to come over. Silently, I slide in behind him, hoping nobody notices the sign on the wall- “No shirt, no shoes, no service.”

When all the living things lived in the ocean, the things which would one day become human floated in the water and the water gave them everything they needed. The water diffused chemicals they needed throughout their body, as they had no vascular system, and because of this they were able to live, and grow, and change. As they changed, they began to keep their water inside, through tubes which filtered what they needed in and what they didn’t out. Over time, the water changed, but the water that they kept inside still mimicked what they had lived in all that time ago, as they had built their body around protecting that water and keeping it the same. That is to say, when the thing that would one day become human crawled onto the sand, they circulated water throughout their body which was only there because long long ago they had built their body around protecting that water, and keeping it the same. That is to say, every fluid in our body is filtered from our blood, which is the water which long long long ago a thing in the ocean built their body around protecting, and keeping the same. That is to say, that every animal descended from the thing which would one day become human shares the same salt, the same long-ago memory of the water we came from. Our blood is a memory of an ocean no longer existing, an echo of the pool we spawned from. Isn’t that incredible? Isn’t that fact of our existence a testament to the beauty of this world? There is no part of us that didn’t come from the earth.

My biggest inspiration as an artist is the work of JC Leyendecker- any and all. While the majority of his work was commercial, every piece undeniably drips with his style. His work is, in my opinion, unmatched in terms of depicting people. Not just what one sees, but the essence, the iconography of a person. One only needs to look for a moment at any of his works to understand the intent of the character depicted, but would still be able to pour over the details of the piece for hours more. While I am more inclined towards themes of nature and organic forms, Leyendecker’s immaculate style still serves as an aspiration to me. The softened angular lines of his forms are layered with triangular shadows and detailed, elegant highlights on every inch, almost like one is looking at a 3D model rather than a two-dimensional painting. All of it combines into just an ever-so slightly larger than life feeling, the iconography of which lead to his renown. I wish to do the same with my art, to capture the forms of the world so well that anyone who looks at it can understand what I mean to convey.

Deciding my favorite piece of art is one of the harder questions that has been asked of me. Every day I am met with more heart rendering displays of talent, vision and beauty than I thought stars in the sky. If there weren’t so many incredibly powerful works by modern artists I would have been inclined to pick something I’ve seen recently, but it would be like attempting to pick the most gleaming drop of water from a lake. Instead, I will say that my long-term favorite piece of art is undoubtedly Wheatfield with Crows by Vincent Van Gogh. Vincent often painted outdoor scenes, rolling hills of green or soft yellow wheat lined in rows in a field or countryside. Wheatfield with Crows was painted in the last few weeks of his life, even argued to be his last painting, but without that knowledge it is still significant in its own right. The paint strokes are thick and saturated in color; the sky swirls with dark shades of blue encroaching upon the somewhat muddy yellow of the wheat, which seems to be swaying in the wind. Three distinct paths stretch out from the viewer in the field, with no clear destination or landmarks in the distance. The crows above are likewise directionless, rising up from the wheat without indication as to whether they are descending or fleeing. It presents a feeling of distinct loneliness, entirely alone in the tall fields of wheat apart from the foreboding presence of the dark black crows. Still, one can’t help but feel a sense of quiet looking at the scene. The patches of bright yellow and soft green show the life and virility of the countryside. While alone, the painting is not without hope, and I believe that be beautiful.

I have been arguing all of my life. Everybody enters the world screaming, but my parents have told me that since I was born I’ve made the same expression; a scrunched up nose with my eyebrows furrowed and my lip stuck out like I’m about to tell you every way I disagree with what you just said. I was what teachers called opinionated- about everything, all the time. Of course, when you’re a kid there aren’t too many things to be opinionated about (despite my best efforts), but I still tried to wrap my head around whatever I could, as best that I could. This served me pretty okay in arguments with other kids, because by the time I’d gotten through points A, B, and C, they were usually still trying to figure out what I was talking about to begin with, but most adults didn’t appreciate being talked at a mile a minute by a kid who may or may not know the first thing about whatever the topic was. What changed this for me was my elementary school librarian, and later the ethics bowl team at my high school. In the library, you’re supposed to be quiet, but we would often read a book together as a class and then discuss it. Of course, I would raise my hand as high as I could, punch my fist in the air, hum with my mouth, anything to get called on so I could spill all of my thoughts into the room as fast as possible. The librarian noticed this, and one day pulled me aside and told me that sometimes, in order to understand, first you need to listen. This may seem obvious, but at the time I was a small child who felt they could pretty much figure anything out from context clues. When at first I couldn’t understand, I brute forced my way into understanding. He taught me that the first rule of understanding anything, and by doing so argue for anything, was to listen and learn. For the first time, I sat quietly and listened to what my classmates had to say before raising my hand. This is when I stopped arguing, and began discussing. Later, when I entered high school, I still had very strong convictions about what I believed in, but I had also found a love for long discussions and debates about pretty much any topic. I had never done debate club before, but when I saw that my school was going to build a team for the state ethics bowl, I saw that this was something I wanted to learn more about. I learned a lot during our preparation for the bowl, especially about how the way we argue for or against something impacts our credibility. While I had learned the power of listening, this experience exposed to me that in order to understand an issue objectively, you need to look at it through all sides of the equation.

It has taken me a long time, but I have learned to seek happiness out. When you are a child happiness finds you, it stumbles into your lap, comes and goes as easy as the breeze. It is hard to learn, as you get older, that this changes. Happiness can get difficult. It can take effort. There will come a time when you are working harder than you ever have before, with more responsibilities than you’ve ever had before, and happiness will not come knocking. You are doing everything right, everything you think you should be doing, and you may not be happy. I believe this is because, when you are younger, you don’t need to look very far to see or experience something you never have before. The whole world is so curious and new, it seems that happiness is pouring from every corner. I think that happiness hides in pockets. It’s everywhere around you, all the time, but you forget to look. You forget that the world is a vast, exciting place. You are scared that happiness won’t be as good as you remember it. You think all this, but it’s not true. Un-harden your heart, and light will come in. I find happiness in all the smallest places. I lay in grass and watch the light glow on yellow flowers, I smile at animals and babies with their wide, curious eyes. I catch snowflakes on my tongue and wander in the twilight. I open my window and happiness is there, blowing on the warm breeze just like it once did.

I believe that art is the foundation of human understanding. It speaks, sings, molds and is molded by the world. What I am passionate about- what I want others to be passionate about- is our inherent connection to nature and the world around us, and how we and our culture shapes it, is shaped by it. At my school, a previous student had painted a mural using the phrase “I am a creature of the culture that we create.” This spoke to me because it reminded me of this idea; the nature of being molded and molding your surroundings. I think that this understanding would be vastly beneficial to my community and humanity as a whole, and I want to foster the ability to recognize how all the different systems interlock together and shape who we are, how we behave. Understanding this is imperative to changing these systems. Because of that, I wanted to create a mural with the intention of inspiring people who saw it to ask questions and interrogate how they interact with nature and the environment. To do this, I was inspired by the phenomena of concentric lines found in many different parts of the natural world. Geodes, sediment and tree circles being the most notable examples, concentric lines show us the history of an object or piece of land. When a line diverges from the originating shape, all the ones following are shaped by that divergence, sometimes sprawling out into a completely different shape than what it was originally. Looking at nature, one can look and see these patterns of change in almost everything. It is the object’s history, but it is also its future; the two are inextricably linked. I see this same pattern in my world, in my community, our history, and the way we live now. In my piece, the human figure is surrounded by lines emanating from it, but it also has the heads of two animals resting on its shoulders, which the lines curve around as well. Inside of the wolf and falcon’s silhouettes are the lines which would have been emanating from the human’s shape without their presence. I intended for this to represent how our way of living defines the lives of every other creature. The human figure is based off of Da Vince’s “Vitruvian Man”, a diagram meant to depict the ideal human form; man, in its essence. In my piece, it impacts the world around it, but it too has the lines of change running through it, from many different sources. We seek to control and dominate nature, but we too are a part of it, displaying nature’s pattern in our very beings. If I can get one person to see this pattern through my art, then I will have succeeded, as even one divergence forms every line that follows.