The Person I Can't Have
This piece is about the issues between people in different cultures. Marriage and romance is something that should be freely expressed in our generation yet in the LGBTQ+ as well as even marrying a different race from your own, it is hard to get approval for marriage if the person is quite different from you. In this piece, the "girl" has her own things on her mind and is turning away from the "man" in the back and the guy reaches out to her from the behind with romance in mind (implicating the hand with the rose inside) but at the same time, a hand full of hurt and heartbreak reaches out as well. The cultural difference makes the hand not reach the girl but instead, in a world where everyone is able to marry whoever they want (the shadow), he is able to reach her.
Innocence
Innocence
The theme of this painting is innocence. The little girl is hugging a real-life bear as if it's a real bear in a sense of innocence. If we can look at animals in the eyes of the young, animal cruelty can be reduced and animals can have a safer life in the wild. Of course, treating a real bear like a teddy bear is dangerous but in that sense, treated a real bear like a prized teddy bear can lead to citizens realizing how cruel their treatment towards animals really is.
The theme of this painting is innocence. The little girl is hugging a real-life bear as if it's a real bear in a sense of innocence. If we can look at animals in the eyes of the young, animal cruelty can be reduced and animals can have a safer life in the wild. Of course, treating a real bear like a teddy bear is dangerous but in that sense, treated a real bear like a prized teddy bear can lead to citizens realizing how cruel their treatment towards animals really is.
Fourth Street
This painting is set on a place called Fourth Street. It is called "Go Fourth" to represent the notion of going forth, persevering through all the difficulties life throws your way. As shown in the painting, the car in the middle is continuously striving to go forward, regardless of the long, winding street.
Earth in Sauna
For the art titled "Clean", I was trying to talk about the water problem in Africa, Ethiopia etc. with lack of clean water. I only put color in the water because I tried to express that this is the first time that the girl is drinking clean water, so she only drank dirty water.
Clean
For the "Earth in Sauna", it is probably easy to see what the issue is. I tried to express global issue in this drawing. I saw many drawings with melting ice cream drawn like Earth, and some other ideas, but not sauna. I thought this could be a unique idea, and since sauna is more of like Asian culture it fitted more with the global warming issue. I am not saying that all Asian country has big influence on global warming, however, I wanted to talk in one perspective, which for this art was Korea. I am a Korean, and I can't say that Korea has no air pollution, but I think most of the influence to the pollution in Korea is from China.
Aimless
Aimless was inspired by global warming and the destruction of the planet, while the shape (a sphere) represents the earth, the almost rust-like glaze represents how the earth is slowly rotting away due to human occupation.
Flames
Flames was based on the aftermath of deforestation and forest fires because as the glaze shows a fiery red, the flames show that, to build a geometric structure (below the flames) there must be destruction.
Steam Punk Flowers
I created this artwork in 6th grade. The inspiration for this artwork came from the industrial rubbish that humans throw away in fields. I wanted to fuse nature and industrialization.