Joyce Li (’24)

How did you first react when you heard you won the award? 

Scholastic Art Awards are a pretty big deal, so I knew to keep my expectations extremely low after I submitted my drawings. I eventually forgot about the Art Awards, and was shocked when my mom opened my door and told me that I had won gold for the artwork that I had submitted! I really didn’t think that I would win anything at all, so I was genuinely surprised that I had gotten a gold award, and it didn’t really set in for a while. Once I realized that I had finally earned something that showed off how much work I put into drawing, I was extremely proud.

What was your favorite piece you submitted this year?

One of the drawings I submitted this year was called We Are All in the Same Boat. The drawing is of a bunch of fish put into ice, presumably after fished out of the ocean. Although maybe it wasn’t my best drawing, it was my favorite by far because I was drawing something new, and because I liked thinking about what the story behind it would be.

What were the messages or themes you wanted to convey through your piece?

I drew this with the idea of environmental damage in mind, and how unnatural it is that fish are buried in ice for people in grocery stores to buy instead of living in the water. I think that although we’ve been damaging our environment for so long now, some people are still ignorant to how the effects will come back to haunt us. The name implies how eventually, this problem, despite being caused by us, is one that we are all stuck with.