Student Spotlight: Eternity Owens
October 27, 2021
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Eternity Owens, a junior at DVHS, draws inspiration from personal experiences to create her piece on social anxiety for her AP Art portfolio.
Eternity Owens'
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Eternity Owens, a junior at DVHS, draws inspiration from personal experiences to create her piece on social anxiety for her AP Art portfolio.
Eternity Owens'
Sustained investigation: “How can I use fiction and fantasy in order to help predict the future and find understanding through our human experiences?”
I chose [this theme] because I really love fantasy and fiction. When I was younger, it was the best way for me to be able to have fun because I would always be [moving] around all the time, and so I would always sort of be making new friends. Sometimes, it was difficult, so I used my imagination to be my own friend. Also, I just think fantasy is really fun. Who doesn’t want to do research on myths and draw dragons and have fun with things that don’t really exist?
This artwork is trying to portray something like social anxiety, and the way that I wanted to try showing this was through the subject itself. I took a picture of myself and did it in a realistic form to show how the eyes that are around you aren’t actually real; they’re fictional, cartoony [and] don’t actually exist. Because your social anxiety is all in your head, nobody’s actually saying these things to you, nobody’s coming up to you and telling you how bad you are, saying that they hate you or anything.
It’s almost like the eyes [are] always surrounding you, because you always feel like you’re being watched. There’s different words in the background because you’re always thinking, “Oh I can’t do this, I can’t do that, people are saying that this thing or that thing,” and it’s always negative. And it’s all just your own personal bias against yourself.
And I thought it’d be cool to show me being turned to stone, because [you’re] petrified by your own sick ideas.
I wanted to try doing something a little bit more personal, something that I knew I understood, as one of the first pieces that I would make towards the sustained investigation. And I believe that if I were to do something more that holds meaning to me, it would be a good segway into the rest of the stuff I would make.
