[Student Reporters] Reflection Through Art

Annette Ko /11th,Northwood High School

During the Veteran's week the winning entries of the PTA Reflections art contest were displayed at Irvine City Hall. The students whose art pieces made to the city division captured this year's theme "The Beauty is..." by incorporating their own definition of "beauty" and stitching it together with their own personality with the use of their boundless creativity.

In every corner of the lobby were paintings photographs and writing compositions completed by students in kindergarten up to high school. To articulate the meaning of the abstract word "beauty" many students created abstract art pieces such as a pencil drawing of an eye with earth as the pupil.

A senior at Northwood High Meriel Kim who unfortunately could not make to the city division painted the beauty of a mother bringing a new life a baby to the world. "I thought about beauty at the most basic level where things that are crucial in our lives get forgotten so easily. A mother giving birth to a baby was in my opinion the beauty of the basic nature" said Meriel Kim.

Along with visual arts short fictional stories poems and other writing compositions were displaced on the tables in the City Hall lobby. Angela Luh a junior at Northood High who won the first place in Literature of the PTA Reflections Program at school last year won an award for her memoir of her experience in a rural part of Taiwan.

"When I went to a countryside of Taiwan to meet my relatives a couple years ago I thought the place was unaesthetic and dirty but after a while I came to realize that true beauty lies beneath the surface and in the culture that I got to learn" said Angela Luh.

The Reflections Program run by PTAs provide students the opportunity to be recognized for their contribution to art which can sometimes teach them more than school book learning. Art teaches people to look at the world from a different perspective in addition to unleashing their imagination.

Perhaps the theme "beauty" makes us take a step back and reflect on what life truly means to us and realize the tiny bits of happiness and thankful moments we have thoughtlessly missed.