Sophomores
Sophomores worked on a Found Object/Mixed Media projects that touched upon themes and plot points discussed in Americanah.
​My name is Alex Guzman and I am a rising sophomore at Trenton Central High School. I am really into video games and it's my joy. I am planning on becoming a computer programmer further into my life.
Alex Guzman
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Artist Statement
My project is titled Mix and Match as it has different kinds of construction paper and its about all things that I like, things that I find interesting and makes me want to think about it. The things that inspire me is myself because of how everything here is things that I like and I choose to do this because of how it felt right to me. It was pretty simple on what to do but it was nice doing something more on the easier side. Themes that inspired this is the gaming community as for it is a fun place to be able to play games and make new friends as well as the internet on how some of the things on my project I would have never been found out if I couldnt search it up.
My name is Amier Elnaggar. I am a rising sophmore at Nottingham high school. I don't do any sports but i have been looking to do wrestling. I love to play video games on my PS3. I like to wrestle or mess around with my brothers even though I have a 100% chance of losing against them. my future goals is to get into a top college and make my father proud and hopefully find a job that i truly want and not just something i may like. I like to listen to music all the time and i like all types of music.
Amier
Elnaggar
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Artist Statement
My project is titled "Me" and 2 elements in this project is the way I can express myself and my feelings/thoughts of myself and my life. which ultimately represents me and I chose to do this because I want others to know who I really am. I was inspired by others sharing ther thoughts and personal experiences and I want to share that too. Themes would be Identity and personal experiences of myself.
My name is Andy Garcia and my passion for exceeding my own mental and physical abilities is what makes me who I am. I'm a rising Sophmore at Lawrence High School, I was born in Trenton, New Jersey and was raised almost all my life in Lawrence. My parents are both Guatemalans yet my mom shares a hint of mexican. Some things I like to do in my free time are biking and most of all, hanging out with my friends.
Andy
Garcia
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Artist Statement
My project is titled "Puzzled" and my reason for portraying identity as a puzzle is because I can relate to those who have tried forcing themselves to do something or to be like someone just to fit in. Each puzzle piece is supposed to represent a part of what makes you, you. What I want people to gain from this art piece is a better understanding of what it looks like when you try to fake a persona that doesn't fit right with you. Faking to be someone causes them to forget who they used to be which can lead to them feeling lost. This can relate almost directly to Dike when he said he feels confused to who he is because he lives in America, trying to be American, while he is almost fully Nigerian with Nigerian parents. We can experience the moment Dike loses himself when he refuses to use the sunscreen simply because he was told not to by his white peers.
My name is Awa White, I am a rising sophomore at Ewing High School. I enjoy listening to music, hanging out with my friends, and writing. I am passionate about social justice, women’s rights, and combating discrimination against minorities. My future career goals are to have a job that will allow me to make some type of difference in this world and to help others. In the future, I would also like to start my own successful business one day and travel across the world.
Awa White
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Artist Statement
My project title is "Qui je suis". This project was inspired by my ethnicity and culture. The tray is decorated with the Senegalese flag and colors of different objects to represent the flag as well. My ethnicity has a huge aspect in my life including traditions I practice, food I eat, and the language spoken by my family. I take pride in my ethnic background and it is something that I love and embrace. The jewelry that is displayed on the tray priceless to me. All of them belonged to my grandmother and were passed on to me. The woven silver bracelet, the heart, and the melted silver ring were all hand made by her and as well as the other pieces is something that I will cherish for a lifetime. The turquoise neckalace was something that my grandmother loved to wear and the silver neckalces as well. The amber neckalce is from a tribe in west Africa and was handmade and was a gift my father gave me. Most importantly the silver heart earrings were my grandmothers favorite piece of jewerly that she wore almost every day, and knowing that I have all this from her makes me feel like I still have a part of her with me. The box is where I keep all the most important things given to me. This box holds memories and pieces that are worth more than anything to me.
Betaneya
Tsegay
​My name is Betaneya Tsegay and I am a rising sophomore at Princeton High School. My hobbies are watching and playing basketball, biking, running, roller skating, and playing video games. My future career goal is to become a pharmacist. I have been interested in careers in healthcare, and I am determined to assist people with giving them the specific prescription they need. My main goal for the future is to focus more on being successful, instead of focusing on the media because the media will distract me and waste my time. My success will start with my education, and I will see where that leads me in the future.
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Artist Statement
My project is titled "Eritrea to America." My project is constructed with collage and drawing to one artwork. My experience in America has changed my identity from when I used to live in Eritrea. The left side of my artwork represents the components that construct Eritrea because they make up my identity. The right side of my artwork represents the components that construct America because they have changed my identity. I am walking towards the right side of the artwork because I am slowly departing from my Eritrean culture as I have been experiencing American culture for a long time. The representations of America have changed me, and I am trying to go back and focus on my culture. But, I am not entirely departed from my culture because my family and I have coffee celebrations, celebrate Eritrean holidays, wear Eritrean clothes, eat Eritrean food, plus more. My project will say to the world that being an immigrant from another country will impact you, and can change your identity. My artwork creates a strong connection to Americanah because Ifemelu and her family are affected by Americanization like me and my family. Our identities have changed, but we traveled to America because it has many successful opportunities.
My name is Brielle Jenkins and I go to Ewing High School. I like to read, dance, watch movies, and listen to music. I'm very creative and I have a lot of different interests.
Brielle
Jenkins
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Artist Statement
My piece is named "Empty Spaces" and it takes place in a room, with different things showcasing who I am. There are a few empty spaces that I just can't fill. The main part of the picture is the bookshelf, which shows some things that I like, and things that affect me. Another main aspect of my artwork is the haitian flag that's rolled up on the side of the bookcase, which I can't hang up to represent since I don't know much about that part of myself yet. My inspiration for my project comes from the many artists who use their paintings to tell a story, or send a message through their art. I wanted to be able to show different parts of my identity, while explaining how Americanization has affected an aspect of my life.
My name is Daniela Garcia Perez. I am a rising sophomore at Princeton High School. I enjoy art and listening to music. Plus, enjoy playing video games. In the future I would like to do something related to math or art, or even both.
Daniela
Garcia Perez
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Artist Statement
My work is titled "Los Diablos" and it is about a tradition in Oaxaca Mexico called “Los Diablos de Oaxaca” which is a dance where women and men dress in these masks (usually with devil faces and horns) and ragged clothes. The people who participate put on music and do these dances which are very tiring, but they have a blast and can go as energetic as they want as their faces are not seen. For my two paintings, I did one mask per painting, plus the top of the person wearing the mask. Then I created my own mask with my materials at home, and painted it and put on the extra details.
The dance is made to be a cultural legacy for the Afro-Mexicans in Mexico. They have a huge role is Mexicos history, as they went through slavery and a lot of their traditions were washed away by colonizers. Afro-Mexicans make up a very small percent of the population, that is why it’s an important tradition. The Afro-Mexicans slaves created and did the dance as a ritual towards a god, Ruja, as a way to get help to be freed. There are two leaders in the dance, who carry a bell and rope and they lead the rest in the dance. Plus the dancers, there are also three musicians.
My name is Daniela Guerra-Solares and I am a rising sophmore at Lawrence High School. I love gardening and listening to a variety of music. I find interest in any types of hands-on activities. I also Love architecture and hope to become an architect in the future.
Daniela
Solares
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Artist Statement
Through my artwork (to be decided),I hope to spread positivity and pieces of my identity to the world. My goal has been to be able to communicate with people even if they don’t know me personally. Through my artwork, I hope to give people an understanding of who I am. I’ve never been skilled in the art field but even so, when I do sketch, I feel liberated as if I let go of my biggest worries. Drawing helps me continue to move forward in the path of finding my identity. As I walk through that path, I record my biggest obstacles and victories with this artwork being one of them.
Diana
Ramirez Lopez
My name is Diana and I am currently an upcoming sophomore in Nottingham High School. I am 15 years old and enjoys traveling and exploring new places! I have has always maintained her goals as a priority. Some of the actions I take to make sure my goals get done is setting small plans to make sure I get to where I want to be even if it involves taking smaller steps!
Artist Statement
My project is titled "Frame of Mind and It's Manipulations". To me it is important to spread awareness of mental health and how much it can affect your identity. I came to a realization of how important the topic of indentity was during personal development class. This was because of our activities in relation to the topic. Our class book is titled "Americanah" and identity plays a huge role in the book itself. The struggles mentioned in this book really opened my eyes and provided me with a representation of how much real life situations can manipulate your mind and even change who you are as a person. This book is a huge inspiration to my art piece!
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My name is Eshal Nawaz, I am a rising sophmore at Nottigham Highschool. I enjoy reading and learning about world events and history. I also like getting creative and working on hands on projects.
Eshal
Nawaz
Artist Statement
My project is titled "5 Letters, 15 Years". The five letters of my name come together to showcase the past 15 years of my life through pictures. I choose this because the biggest part of my identity is my memories. The inspiration behind this piece stems from the fact that our names are the biggest thing that helps to identify us. So using my name to display pictures that show my life showcases the theme of identity. Each of the letters of my name showcases images of the 3 years of my life to make up a total of 15 years. Therefore representing 15 years of my life through the 5 letters of the name that make up my identity.
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My name is Garett Gayle I am a rising sophomore at the Trenton Central High school. I love sports wrestling in particular I like to go with the flow and try not to overcomplicate things. I try to stay laid back and chill. I love just being myself. I may not show it but I’m very proud of the things I’ve accomplished and cherish them. I also want to wrestle professionality and major in engineering.
Garett Gayle
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Artist Statement
I was inspired to make this because I want to show my identity. I want the thing that I am proud of to be shown. Everything I’m proud of reflects on my identity. This is the best way I could show my achievement and my identity as one.
Gloria Burton
My name is Gloria Burton, and I am a rising sophomore at Nottingham High School. I play Tennis for my school. I love to sing, play cello, and learn history. I aspire to be a real estate agent. I want to get an MSRE (Master of Science in Real Estate) and sell luxury real estate. My dream is to become a broker.
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Artist Statement
My project is titled “A Cross Between Identities.” This piece of art depicts my identities into one. Everything that I identify with combines or crosses into each other. This means it shows everything I identify with as one whole thing. My focus was showing how I can bring in everything that I identify with as something put together. I wanted to clearly express this so that the person who views my project would instantly know who I am. I feel like this piece clearly expresses everything that I would want a stranger to know. In this day of age, I feel that there should be some kind of connectivity through art and who a person is. To me, this would be that!
My name is Henry Lopez-Bravo and I am a rising sophomore at Ewing Highschool. I enjoy playing soccer, boxing, listening to music, swimming, and playing volleyball. I always work on improving myself mentally and physically. I always try to put my best foot forward with everything I do.
Henry Lopez-Bravo
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Artist Statement
My project piece is named “Identity.” Throughout the course of this summer everything that I learned questioned my identity. I never knew how important it was for me to express myself and who I am as a person. It is important to express yourself and where you come from and this is what I try to convey with this piece. For some it may be uncomfortable telling where you come from but everyone has a story and there's always gonna be one person wanting to hear your story. Everyone is different and that is the true art because everyone is unique and special in their own way. The overall theme I got from this summer is Identity and I wanted to show that in this art piece.
Jocelyn Paz
My name is Jocelyn Santos Paz, I am a rising sophmore at Lawrence highschool. I like doing many different types of art but I mostly like drawing characters I create. I also to make little trinkets or build small things. My goal is to graduate form college and study to become an animator.
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Artist Statement
My inspiration was for this project was a mix of my love of short comics and my journey of trying to figure our my identity As a kid I loved making my own comic strips and always wanted to make my own characters.Which is how I decided to format this project based on a comic. Recently I've also been putting more thought into what I believe my identity is. Before I wouldn't think about who I was so it was somewhat of a struggle to figure it all out. After taking more time into learning about identity I realized that it was all like a journey. Each person goes through the journey to one's identity. So my idea with this project is to show that journey in an engaging way
My name is Juan Mira and I am a rising sophomore at Lawrence High School. I enjoy hanging with friends and family, but I do also enjoy staying at home listening to music and playing videogames. Sometimes I try to strengthen my mind by reading books and leaning new stuff. I have always try to do my best when I am interested in something, when I am not into something I don't give my 100%.
Juan Mira
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Artist Statement
My project is titled "The culture Mochila". What inspired this piece is that in my culture this are used by poeple in old small villages. what inspired me to maket hsi pices is that recentyl my mom wanted this type of bag since they are not common here, and if they are here they are super expensive. What also inspired me is that I watched a colombina narco movie where they used this type of bags. This type of bags are used to carry stuff just like a regular handbag
My name is Karly Columna and I’m a rising sophomore at Trenton Central High School. I enjoy sketching, traveling, playing video games and practicing the piano. As for future career goals, I’ve always been interested in the business field (finance, accounting etc.) However, my ultimate dream would be to own a business one day.
Karly
Poblete
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Artist Statement
My project is titled “Nature's reward”. The idea for my project was to demonstrate how much of an impact little things can have on your journey to discovering your true identity. There are several factors that contribute to the creation of your identity. Culture, religion, and past experiences are a few. However, with everything going on in our modern day society, finding a way to represent yourself can be difficult. That’s why it's so important to take a break from all the stress in life every once in a while. My project displays the approach I take to ensure that I’m constantly reminding myself of who I am and what I value the most in life. I painted a scenery and myself in the middle, to represent the environment in which I feel truest to myself.
My name is Katherine Zaldivar Rodriguez, I am 15 years old and a rising sophomore at Nottingham High School. I am a child of Honduran immigrants, I was born in New Jersey, and I lived in two other towns before moving to Hamilton in 5th grade. I like listening to music, watching new shows or movies, and hanging out with my sisters. When I grow up I'd like to be an actress, but I also want to help to bring about change in the world and help others. I also want to travel a lot in my life, especially to Honduras since I've never been there.
Katherine Rodriguez
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Artist Statement
This project was inspired by my struggles with my cultural identity and the parts of my identity that I have chosen for myself, like my personality and my interests. Each aspect of this project represents an aspect of my personality; the pictures in the infinity symbol represent my cultural identity, the treehouse represents my mind/headspace, the flowers each represent a personality trait that I've always had, or has grown with me, the string and soda tab stars represent my love for nighttime/the night sky and my love for theatre, each of the figures next to the tree represents one of my sisters, and the cds represent my love for music and they're reflective, which represents the way my indentity is a reflection of how i see myself and vice versa. Some of themes seen in this project are culture, family, identity, and a little bit of mental health.
My name is Marelin Lopez, I'm a rising sophmore at Ewing high school, I was born and raised in New Jersey. I enjoy reading and drawing, and I have a big intrest in learning new things about animals.
Marelin
Lopez
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Artist Statement
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My name is Melany Severino. I am a rising sophomore at Trenton Central High School. I do art and also play the violin. I spend my free time binging on Netflix and on tiktok, or just sleeping. I am doing a mosaic style piece, incorporating different art pieces of hair. What inspired me was the concept behind the beauty in all hair types. It is important to me since I grew up with curly hair but always hearing about the ideology that only straight hair is beautiful.
Melany
Severino
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Artist Statement
My project is titled "Beauty In Texture". This element represents the beauty in textured hair. I chose to do this because i think textured hair deserves more recognition and more love. What Inspired my pieace was a similar art I saw but as a drawing not 3D. Themes that inspired my piece would be the way i grew up learning that straight hair is beautiful so i wanted to make something in response to that, emphazing that all hair types are beautiful but focusing on textured hair. Growing up with a dominican family straight hair was the beauty standard and when I couldnt fit that, I really struggled. So I wanted to make a piece for all those girls that used to be in my position.
My name is Melissa Pacaja. I am a rising sophomore at Trenton Central Highschool. I enjoy reading, listening to music, watching movies, and anything beauty related. I don’t really know what I want to do with my life but I like the idea of something related to writing.
Melissa
Pacaja
Artist Statement
My project is called “A Woman's Liberty.” My project depicts a woman’s body covered with flowers, while hands are trying to grab her. The body was made using a barbie doll for a mold, and it represents the male gaze and the ideal beauty standard. The body is covered with flowers to represent the beauty of a woman's body. The hands represent the harassment and assault women face. The artwork I made has a very special and deep meaning to me. Women are constantly being minimized, victim blamed, harassed, etc. within our own communities. I made this project not only to recognize the issues women face but also to celebrate women. A woman should have the liberty to do what she wants with her body without having to worry about repercussions.
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My name is Najay Sinclair. I am a rising sophomore at Trenton Central High School. I play sports and Games competitively. In my free time, I always try to do something productive like working out or just play video games and watching Netflix with my friends as long as I'm moving forward I consider it productive. what Inspired me was the fact that i have a lot of medals laying around and nowhere to put them so I'm gonna create this piece to help me and everyone around me.
Najay
Sinclair
Artist Statement
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My name is Niomi Glover and I am a rising sophomore at Ewing High School. I enjoy music, nature, and travelling to different places. I don't have specific plans for my future but I want to be succesful in everything I do. I like helping people and travelling so I hope that the career I pursue includes those two thing
Niomi
Glover
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Artist Statement
My piece is called "Purple Cloud" I made this piece to symbolize and show the beauty of black hair. I hope that it inspires young black girls or black person having trouble loving their natural hair. The colors I used are supposed to make the piece look bright and appealing and black hair is just that. I also used hair clips to add more design to the piece
O'glenn
Togar
My name is O’glenn Togar. I am 15 years old and I was born in Philly but grew up in New Jersey. Right now I am rising Sophomore at Ewing High School. I really like Basketball and anything to do with STEM. I grew up watching a lot cartoons and anime so that has been a big part of who I am today. I really like computers, robots, and space so thats what I want to do for the rest of my life. I would love to be a Robotics Engineer at NASA or Boston Dynamics, and even become an Astronaut one day.
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Artist Statement
My project title is "Inside my mind". It is a collage of all the things that are close to me. Each of the four corners has a different meaning in my life. The left hand side and corner represents my family. My brothers, dog, and baby cousin make an apperance. The top left corner in my future, where I hope to be. My dream to be an astronaut, a Robotics engineer, and a college graduate. The top Right corner is my childhood and all the things that make me happy. Shows and characters that I used to watch, even memes that I love so much. The last but not least corner is my Religion, I am a christian which plays a big role in my life. The one thing that is consistent is that most of the pictures are combined with some other picture. That is because I thought it would be funny, which also speaks to my carefree and goofy nature.
Steven Cameros
My name is Steven Cameros. I am a rising sophomore at Trenton Central Highschool. I enjoy playing video games with my friends. I also like listening to music and something I'd want to do is travel around the world.
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Artist Statement
My project is titled "The Quetzal". My piece is the national bird of Guatemala and it represents where my family is from. Something that inspired my piece is looking at the Guatemalan flag that we have hanging in the house.Themes that inspired my piece was identity and family because it represents where me and my family are from. I also liked how the bird looks so it makes it more interesting to make.
William Ovalle
My name is William Ovalle and I am a rising sophomore attending TCHS. I enjoy reading, listening to music, walking in the park, and playing with my cat Bella. Something id like to do in the future is make a positive and everlasting impact on my community of Trenton.
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Artist Statement
My project is called "The flowers". The newspaper portion of the project represents my parent's love for reading the news. They read the newspaper during the entire time they were in Guatemala but stopped when they arrived in America due to them not understanding English. As time and technology passed so did my parent's English, now they are able to read the newspaper on their phones.
Going on walks is a pastime I enjoy with my family.
We enjoy taking long walks in the park while observing, breathing fresh air, looking at animals, and most importantly being with each other. Hence the flowers and trees in my project.