Reflection

Reflection

During the creation of Foreign Summers, I was heavily influenced by the abrupt awakening of summer in Vancouver a few weeks ago. The way the sun shone, and the ponds glistened reminded me of my summer tradition of returning to Ningbo, China, and visiting a park that held all of my most precious childhood memories. Foreign Summers became an outlet for the helplessness I experienced when I saw the beauty and life of the beloved park struggle against the inevitable claws of climate change. By shifting the warm and muted tones to a refreshing and vibrant teal hue, I wanted to portray the clash between how other people perceived the park, still opulent, still radiating, and how I, the melting figure on the right, seemed to be the only one conflicted the way it was decaying, piece by piece. As my visits to the old park grew rarer, the memories of going there grew foggier too, proved in the blurred photos on the fridge. Change, and the possibility of change against climate change, is the message I wanted to portray to my audience with the presence of the fish above me; a beaming sturgeon in the haze of grey and must above me, a token of hope for the change that we can still make. I incorporated this experience through my roots in China by constructing the cross-bridge between my story of climate change in Vancouver (my current home), and Ningbo by painting log booms, which are commonly exported from British Columbia to China. Deforestation in British Columbia is heavily affected by the production of log booms, so I decided to include them to further portray my frustration of climate change. Lastly, the previously mentioned sturgeon fish can symbolize both the endangered Chinese Sturgeon and the White Sturgeon in British Columbia. Finally, the title, Foreign Summers is me narrating the unrecognizable state of the once vibrant lily pads and clear waters of the park, and the drawing, my story of slowly losing it to climate change.