Our Global Neighborhood

Katie Ching is a 9th grader at Stanford OHS.

"I was inspired to make this piece after a recent trip to Turkey and the UAE, which opened my eyes to the fact that as people, we're so distant physically, yet so close in other aspects. The famous landmarks in the drawing symbolize physical distance between people, and the string of people holding hands is used to represent people from different countries. This is to say that it doesn't matter where a person lives, what their nationality is, what language they speak, or where they're from, what matters is that we're all people, and all value similar things. As you may notice, the people in the drawing are "reflected" under the landmarks. This is because people may not live in the country they are from, but they are still part of our global community. A bit on the title, I titled my piece "Our Global Neighborhood" to represent the same theme as I have just described. The "global" part describes the physical distance and diversity between people around the world, while the "neighborhood" part describes a sense of community and closeness, disregarding the various barriers they might face between each other. The title was intentionally made an oxymoron, to contrast the largeness of the world, and the smallness of a neighborhood."