SARASOTA – “The first time I saw Emily’s piece this year, I looked at that thing and my first thought was these people would be crazy not to choose this one for this year’s show,” said Sarasota Middle School Art Teacher, Brooks Tracey.
‘Small Struggles’ an art piece, by Emily Norris, a 7th grader, at Sarasota Middle School won the top prize in The Embracing Our Differences contest.
Sarah Wertheimer, who serves as Executive Director, says the judges were beyond impressed with Emily’s Piece.
“The judging is completely blind so we had no idea that she was a local student or even a student, her artwork was actually compared against adults from around the world and the message was just so strong because everyone on the art panel actually felt like they can relate with the piece,” said Executive Director of Embracing Our Differences, Sarah Wertheimer.
Emily says she wanted to focus on the lack of representation for people of color
“A big aisle of dolls that are advertised to look like the person buying them, but they’re all the same and they’re all not like her,” said Sarasota Middle School 7th grader, Emily Norris.
Mr. Tracey has encouraged students to participate in the program for the past seven years. He says he starts out by having each student define embrace and differences in their own words
“And they kind up come up with their own definition of it and that helps to kind of just stimulate some ideas of what they might want to venture into,” said Mr. Tracey.
This year the exhibit received over 15 thousand submissions from 128 countries
“I was 1, extremely proud of her when we found out it got in, but 2, I wasn’t that surprised because it really was a fabulous piece of artwork,” said Mr. Tracey.
Wertheimer says the most important part is not whether the artwork makes it into the exhibit, but the process.
“That they go through while creating the art while creating their quotations, that’s where the real learning occurs,” said Wertheimer.
The winning quotes and artwork will be showcased at Sarasota’s Bay Front Park, January 20th through April 1st.
For more information, you can visit their website.