Herricks High School junior Jennifer Chun was recently named the winner of an art contest sponsored by the Town of North Hempstead and the town’s Chinese American Association which asked students to create renderings that incorporated Chinese characters and symbols.
Chun’s winning entry was a striking black-and-white self portrait in pencil and polar pencil drawn as a double image contained in the ying-yang symbol commonly associated with Buddhism. Outside the circle was a collage of abstract images with a background of white leather in one section.
“It’s the ying-yang, the balance of good and evil. Everyone has a good and evil side,” Chun said.
Chun said the idea of the double image was her way of expressing the meaning of the symbol itself.
The art contest pitted students from the Herricks and Manhasset school districts. Chun’s winning entry was displayed along with all the winning entries in the contest on the second floor at the town hall on Plandome Road in Manhasset.
Chun said she likes to work in mixed media. She said she completed her winning entry over the course of three weeks.
“I usually work in paint, but I thought other materials were necessary,” she said.
Chun has been taking art lessons for several years outside of school, and has also started taking art classes in middle school and in high school. She is currently taking courses in AP Art and AP Photography at Herricks High School.
She also volunteers her time in the Herricks district, teaching ceramics to younger students, and also teaches art on a volunteer basis at summer camps.
“I feel like art is inspirational. I feel I should spread it to the generations that are coming,” she said.
Chun said she’s considering studying art in college, perhaps at Carnegie Mellon, and she aspires to work in fine arts and industrial design.
“It’s wonderful,” Mary Passero, related arts and business chairperson in the Herricks School District, said of the work produced by the students at all grade levels. “These things take on a life of their own.”
