A woman ran past me, looking shaken, clutching a handkerchief in her trembling hands. For only a quick moment was I able to glimpse the look on her face, her eyes red with tear tracks running down her cheek as she quickly dabbed her face and exited the art exhibit. It was at that moment that I realized the significant impact that art I created could have. I’ve been visiting art museums since I’ve been able to fit in a baby carrier. I’ve always doodled and drawn and experimented with materials. My Christmas letter to our Ukrainian St. Nicholas was consistently filled with requests for paints, charcoal, sketchbooks, canvases and brushes. I’d never travel anywhere without my pencil and sketchbook in hand. I took every art class available to me in and outside of school and won elementary school sidewalk chalk competitions, and even the Blue Ribbon at our state fair. Looking back, art in all its forms had been a huge part of my identity for as far as I could remember. And yet, I’d never actually considered myself an artist. Artists were exceptional people whose perfect works were known by thousands and displayed in museums, galleries or exhibits. For everyone else, creating art must just be a hobby. My piece “Overdose” is a comment on our need as people to fit societal norms, and the damage that pursuing unrealistic standards can cause us and the people around us. Going through the submission process for my county teen art competition, I felt strongly that I should omit a description, instead choosing to let the audience come to their own conclusions about what the piece represented for them. Although I enjoy having creative design work towards a specific goal, one of the things I love most about art is that things can remain open to interpretation, making it as significant to one person as it is to another. As I made my way around the venue gazing at the beautiful oil paintings and drawings that I knew were equal or surpassed me in technique and aesthetic, I heard commentary from people who were viewing my own piece. Some saw “Overdose”, my clay and metal deceased bird with digested pills inside of it as the morbid truth that we are slowly killing our environment with plastics. Others imagined a representation of the difficulties with battling addiction. I won first place for my piece. The judges were kind and explained what they had seen in it to honor me with my distinguished prize. They let me know that my piece was technically excellent, but more importantly, it evoked reactions- positive and negative. The women that had run out crying had a son who had passed away from a drug overdose. Overdose is the first piece that made me realize I was an artist. It taught me that, despite how near-perfect the other artwork showcased was, technique alone does not merit the importance of a piece.