Congrats to Roy Kim (17, California) for winning a Gold Award in Senior Art in our 2021 Ocean Awareness Contest: Water Rising! 👏 👏 👏 The number of times we looked at his piece and were like, how is this not a photograph?? The texture of the water is just unreal 😳 "While people are warned by the news and taught in classrooms about unnatural weather patterns and natural disasters happening around the world, there is often a disconnect between urgency and reality," he wrote. "The woman in the white shirt standing before ocean waters portrays the feeling of emptiness and passivity in the midst of a chaotic situation. As the snow falls and waves encroach, there is an off-putting mood evoked by the complacency of the pedestrians. Instead of running for their lives, they seem oblivious to the fact that the ocean is swallowing their city." "My art aims to express this lack of urgency we feel towards the changes happening to our earth. This piece questions: What will it take for people t...