After moving three times, sophomore Zoey Lin finally put down roots in Clayton, Mo. Lin was born in Taiwan and moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, at age 2. She later lived in Sweden and Australia before settling in St. Louis.
“It feels like I’m more involved in the community that I live in. I feel more a part of it because I’ve moved around to a lot of different places. It feels hard to be part of a community,” Lin said, “So to have a physical thing that I made and is very integral to the kind of person I am, be part of something that feels like my place in St. Louis is huge.”
Lin’s parents recognized her interest in art and lined the walls with paper when she was three.
“I [would] doodle random things and draw stuff. I could draw on the walls, because I’d been drawing on the walls anyway,” Lin said.
A friend shared a prompt from the St. Louis Art Museum Young Artists Exhibition while Lin was reading The Great Gatsby. The exhibition was seeking interactive work from teens aged 13-19 that reflects on their childhoods.
Lin’s artwork is inspired by her reading of “The Great Gatsby.” It includes a quote from the book. The piece features a painted ocean scene in shades of blue, with three folded paper boats attached to strings that stretch across the canvas.
“[It represents] the idea of struggle, because everybody has different experiences, but we’re all unified in the fact that we have our ups and downs. So the idea of everybody being able to contribute with their own, unique little struggles, I feel like it creates a sense of community,” Lin said.
The boats are clipped along the string, allowing them to move slightly, reinforcing the interactive element of the work. Above the waves, a quote from the novel is written across the top of the piece.
“The main challenge was the technical aspect of the interactive piece, because [of] it’s strings that go across the paper. I had to find a way to attach them without them tangling. Also, my initial idea for attaching the paper boats to the artwork was to use no string. I would just have pins or something like that [because] that might damage the artwork,” Lin said.
The exhibition provided prompts for the artists about their past and how it connects to the present.
“I looked at what the theme is, and how that applies to my own life [and] what kind of experiences I have that relate to that. Being yourself and [using the prompts] the contest is asking of you [are crucial], because it’s going to be most meaningful if you embed it with your own personal sense of art, your own experiences, and what you value,” Lin said.
