I had the privilege of meeting the artists that had worked on the amazing project in Rose dining hall. It was very inspiring to learn that their efforts in creating this art piece and attending different universities was to raise awareness on bullying. “You Will Rise” is an anti-bullying campaign and meeting the artists of this organization taught me that you can not only use creativity to attract people’s attention, but also use it to elicit change.

Speaking with the artists that worked on the art piece in Rose Dining definitely made me appreciate the work a lot more. The piece was drawn on paper-mached maps and featured the portraits of several young women and men. I thought it was interesting that the colors were chosen by the health and wellness center, so that they would be uplifting. The piece featured a lot of turquoise, lavender and yellow tones. It was incredible to see how every detail was carefully chosen and thought out; from the colors to the material of the canvas. The maps represent our various paths to our present identity while the arrows show our interconnectedness. I hope they come again to do another piece next year!

They also spoke briefly about their anti-bullying project (You Will Rise) which gives people a platform to showcase their art. I don’t do a lot of art, but I think it’s a great cause and all of the art they showed looked beautiful.

I loved watching the creation of the mural in the dining room, so I’m glad that I had this chance to meet the artists involved. It was neat to see the time lapse of the entire process. It was also inspiring to hear about the creation and success of the You Will Rise Project. I liked hearing stories from each of the artists and seeing their own individual styles and creations, which were more varied than I was expecting. Not to mention, I got to walk away with a bigfoot sticker, which is a plus in any situation. It’s been a while since I’ve spent time drawing or painting. Maybe this summer I’ll make some time for it.

I have loved drawing for all my life, but I always considered free-lancing as too risky as a career path. My dream job was to create art every day, and eventually be able to display my work in the Chelsea galleries and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, sipping champagne with my sophisticated artist friends and chuckling in French. Unfortunately, through my college career thus far, this part of my life became neglected more and more as my work load becomes increasingly heavier, so much that my sketchbooks and paintbrushes are left to collect dust in the corner of my bookshelf. 

When the four ~professional~ artists introduced themselves, and explained how they held full time jobs as graphic designers and still had time to pursue free-lance on the side, I was immediately in awe. This career path — doing art professionally and free-lancing on the side — was an option that I had never considered before. I admired these people so much for taking the risk to pursue their dreams, especially a risk that I was never willing to take. They were super heroes to me.

After their presentation, I brought up my own online art portfolio from high school to show them, and recited my own sob story of wanting to do art, but also never being able to risk my stable interest in math and technology to go for my dreams. They sympathized, but told me that they were pursing something that they really loved, and that they had to make sacrifices and risks of stability and certainty for their dreams. That’s something I’ll take to heart, and apply even beyond the scope of art and work. They left me with the hope that they would probably revisit Cornell in two years, and if they did, I could help them paint their mural. I am so excited.

Have you noticed the large mural in Rose House Dining Room? The week it was being put up I was fascinated with finding out what it was for, so I decided to attend the artist conversations. I think they all had a really nice message. Everyone needs a way to express themselves, I’ll admit that once or twice I have looked down at art school. In high school, we took the job test and it said I should be a poet. My mom immediately was like you have to be able to support yourself. It was nice to see people actually be successful in such a tough field. They also had jobs that I had never thought of before for someone with an art degree. Maybe that’s what I should do next. I feel like if they had come and talked at my high school, I may appreciate art more today than I do.

My sister is an artist, but she never really expressed to me what her art means to her or why she makes art. So, it was really cool to hear these three artists talk about the kinds of art they make and why they make art. I also found it really cool that these three artists, who did completely different styles of art, were able to connect and work together. I feel like in most professions, it’s very rare for people to have such a wide-reaching and diverse network. I also admire that they provide a space for marginalized groups to express themselves. I grew up in a fairly progressive part of California, and I still knew a lot of people who had trouble coming out in public or even to close friends. I like that the artists’ You Will Rise project aims to help people cope with how our world is currently structured; oftentimes, people are solely concerned with changing the world and forget that until the world changes (which could take a long, long time), there are suffering individuals who could use some support.

Although I wish I got the chance to participate in the hands-on activity earlier in the week, it was really interesting seeing and learning about the thought process that each of the artists had behind the mural in the Rose dining hall as well as each of their individual pieces. I really liked seeing the diversity of art styles that each artist brought and how each of them worked together to create massive work in just three days. I thought a lot of thought went behind this piece and the theme of the maps was really interesting.

I found it cool that each of these artists had different career paths, but were brought together with the You Will Rise Project and based on their mutual friend. I thought that the idea behind this project was really important and I definitely can see how big of an impact that having the opportunity to make art can have to children who don’t normally have the power to express themselves or feel that they are oppressed in school or at home. I felt a lot of positivity from each of the artists and I’m really glad that they spent their time to speak to us.

I found this event really and truly inspiring, because I have always loved the arts in all the ways that it can manifest itself. I played musical instruments for most of my childhood, which was not only a therapeutic experience but also a means and cause for some of my best memories. I loved painting, and sculpting with different types of clays. For me, it brings back fond memories of happier times, because somewhere along the way, I veered off the artistic path and onto a more “scholastic” path.

You all know what I’m talking about. Even from early on in middle school, when your parents are trying to motivate you to take your studies seriously, they start making comments about how unlikely you are to make a living off of certain hobbies– amongst those, many of the artistic outlets we made for ourselves up to that point in our lives. For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about (because your parents never gave you that spiel), consider yourselves lucky. However, I think it’s safe to say that most of you have. As a testament to this presumption, I would like to point out that most of the people who attended this event seem to be pursing careers in STEM (including myself).

It was a very pleasant experience to be surrounded by so much color and creativity for the duration of this event. I felt inspired to take out my colored pencils again. I felt as though I needed to create something, and that is a feeling I haven’t had for a long time. We’re surrounded by white walls and blackboard most of the time. There’s a limit to how creative you can get with formulas and equations, (and yes, that was a joke). I left that room with a brighter outlook for my day from merely seeing slides of different artworks. I have great admiration for each and every one of the individuals who stood there presenting, and sharing their art with us.

It dawned on me as I left this event that there’s a cultural influence in American that deters young minds from pursuing the arts. Before this event I hadn’t even considered that there exist artistic careers from which you can earn a dependable salary, such as working at a greeting card company. It didn’t occur to me that those jobs do exist, even if supply for that kind of work far exceeds demand. For my entire life, everyone has been influencing me to pursue a career in science and I never stopped to think about the jobs that exist outside of that bubble of reality. Even in elementary schools, funding for the arts is constantly being cut because there is a culture that undermines the importance of the arts and the fulfilling experiences that come with it.

I had left the field of art for so long a time. Although I’ve been attending art-related Rose Scholars event for this semester, the time slots for art never lasted long–especially, when it comes to sketching and painting, my last memory about it stopped at middle school.

At first I did not expect much about this event–to be honest I attended it primarily because I somehow missed the Friday event of that week. But I got more out of the conversation than I expected: I initially thought more of the conversation would be about the anti-bullying theme instead of the art itself, but what I was shown was absolutely stunning to the extent that I felt incapable of producing similar work without intense training. It is in fact a more tender way to express anger…

The following field trip taught me a lot as well, whether from techniques of creation or the ideas of collaging maps together. The time spent on this event was unexpected but turned out worthwhile–without it I would never have known what that huge artwork hanging in our dining room actually referred to. Peeking a bit of part of artists’ lives enable me to really revisit the one road not taken for me, to imagine the story of a professional artist, which is a precious opening.

I attended Artist Conversations. Our guest speakers made Rose’s new mural. On top of showing us a time-lapsed video of the mural-creating process, they showed us their work portfolios. One did some mosaic work, another did paintings, and so on. In one of the four guests’ portfolios, there was a picture of the artist standing naked between two bathroom signs—one reading men’s and the other women’s—and their genitalia was obscured by shadows; obviously a statement on transphobic bathroom policies. They shared a lot of content, but when we got to the QnA segment, there were few questions in response. Knowing we were a shy group, they ended up asking us questions. “Do you guys do art?”, “Do you like it?” They wanted to know how we engage with art. Someone notably used to make clothing, others doodled, but it seemed that most of us really didn’t.  I didn’t say, but I used to be really into art. I painted, built miniatures & dioramas, did photography…Now, the artsy-ist thing I do is look at my Instagram feed. I use it thinking, “if I can’t make art right now, at least I can watch someone else doing the kind of projects I want to do”. Basically, I engage with art on a very consumeristic level: I’m always watching other people create, but I don’t do it. I still want to see other people’s work, I just want to start establishing myself as a creative. Generally, these are the sort of thoughts that the event evoked for me.

This weekend I joined some of my fellow Rose Scholars for a presentation and conversation on a new art installation in the Rose dining room. The piece is the product of a team of multimedia artists from the nonprofit anti-bullying You Will Rise Project based in Columbus, OH. I was stunned to learn that a team of four managed to create the massive multimedia mural in just three days. They had to collage maps,  draw and paint figures from a projected image, roll stencil designs, and find enough cardboard for the backing — and they did it all in less time than it takes a non-Prime shopper to receive a package from Amazon. The sped-up progress video made me smile, because there was so much frantic energy and positivity and creativity crammed into a short clip. My favorite part was when one of the artists took a dance break in the middle of painting. The mural will be in the dining hall through the fall semester, so I look forward to seeing it more as I eat and work there.

We were given a prompt to express ourselves with the given materials. The only requirement was that we had to implement the maps. We were then shown examples of collages made of maps. The one that stood out to me most was a silhouette of two heads merging into one  on a black background, which inspired me to do something similar.

When thinking of maps, I instantly thought of my heritage. Although I was born and raised in NYC, Hong Kong is a second home to me. My parents grew up in Hong Kong, so we would speak Cantonese at home and watched a lot of Hong Kong TV Shows. I go to Hong Kong at least once a year, so I feel really close to my Chinese roots. I cut the character for “home” out using the map of China. The character for “home” has two branch like strokes coming out of the right side, which I made out of a map of NYC. I then painted two birds, one with the Hong Kong flag colors and the further one from is with the American flag colors.

Although this can be interpreted as me leaving China to America, I think the collage symbolizes my family more than myself. My parents left their home country, but I grew up feeling very attached to both.

I didn’t have time to finish, which is why the American bird looks fat.

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