Reconstructed

High School Illustration

2021

Miye Sugino, La Canada Flintridge, CA
Program: Visual Arts
School: La Canada High School

My work asks: what can grow from a broken identity? Is memory living? In the first work, I painted an essay I wrote in 4th grade about childhood, and then broke the vase. I then reconstructed the shards with kintsugi—a Japanese technique of filling in the cracks with gold. In the second work, I constructed an abstract vase with photos of my grandmother, and then placed flowers in them to explore memory as a living thing. Though they do wilt, there is time to celebrate their life.