No Time to Waste.
Eco-Art Competition 2021.

Through my piece, “Gazing Glory,” I interpreted the theme of No Time to Waste as a reminder to be in awe of the beauty of nature. Walking through my neighborhood, I underappreciated the grass, flowers, and trees in a way that natures becomes wasteful. Wasteful because if I fall into a habit of monotonous viewing, I begin to think to myself, “What’s the point of even looking when I already know what it looks like?” My artwork brings about awareness, and awareness is a skill that needs to be practiced religiously in order to be reminded of true beauty, which all derives itself from, with a fresh point of view each day and not take advantage of it. The environmental element included in my piece are the flowers and leaves with the centers of the flowers containing an abstract eye to represent watching beauty. Personally, the issue of looking at nature with the same point of view each day is important to me because once I begin to form a habit of adjusting to beauty instead of reverence, it becomes harder for me to enjoy nature each day. One day after the other, I eventually forget about the wonder of nature, and I develop a monotonous assumption of appearance. By using colored pencil and graphite, my piece depicts the colorful side of nature and the black and white perspective of life. The transfer paper used represents the precision of repetition of each day. For those who will view my piece, I hope that when the next time they go on a walk through their neighborhood or look at a flower, they will be in awe and remember how easy it is to fall into the trap of wasting nature’s wonder.