1^st Place Winner - Luck or Luca by Mina Ghobadi
When the colors blur, the words fall, and the sky darken—when your whole world collapses, and you find yourself drowning in silence, unseen and unheard—you wonder if anyone, anything, can truly reach you. You are certain your umbrella, your only shield, is too fragile to withstand the storm. So, you run. Run… away from the weight of loneliness, away from the emptiness, convinced that isolation is the only escape.
But then, a tiny cat, small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, appears. At first, it’s just a cat. But slowly, it becomes more. It becomes your hope, your anchor, your lifeline. In its presence, you realize that connection doesn’t always come in the way you expect. It isn’t always in grand gestures or familiar voices. Sometimes, it’s in quiet companionship, in the steady rhythm of a heartbeat, in the simple understanding of just being together. Suddenly, it doesn’t matter that you have no shield, no protector, no mentor. And some things shift in that moment. Your world regains its purpose. The words find their meaning. And you remember—you cannot drown; you are a strong swimmer.
And it all becomes possible through the simplest, most unexpected, smallest connection—with an orange cat named Luca.

Luck or Luca by Mina Ghobadi

2^nd Place Winner - Apiary by Ellen Berg

My piece apiary is more about connection than it is about loneliness. Right now I think that society is suffering from a loneliness epidemic due to many reasons. A major one is how the lack of walkable cities and third spaces for people to congregate has made it hard for people to connect with others in their community. I think people are also suffering from a lack of connection to the land they live on which perpetuates a different kind of loneliness in our society. I think that if people lived in intentional communities that prioritize the land and basic human needs we would find more conditions with the land and one another. In this piece I tried to envision what one of these communities could look like.

Apiary by Ellen Berg

3^rd Place Winner - Firsts by Isabella Sabala

In this painting my friends and I gather to celebrate our high school graduation after a year and a half of strict isolation during the Covid pandemic. The six of us met in elementary school and went our separate ways after 8th grade. Angelina, in the red, briefly moved to Greece; and the other five went on to attend different high schools across the Salt Lake Valley. However, in the midst of the pandemic we reconnected, and throughout college as I’ve been working on this piece, it has time and time again been a reflection of the people in my living room.

In my experience being alone during Covid was not as isolating as high school, surrounded by people I wasn’t connecting with. My interests, abilities and body were totally removed from whatever identity and relationships I had built as a kid, and I felt so lonely. The title “Firsts” invokes the experience of doing something for the first time, whether it’s breaking the rules, expressing yourself, piercing your ears, or listening to cool music. It wasn’t until after the pandemic that I started taking these kinds of risks, with these friends, and growing up started to be a lot of fun. I began building a new identity for myself, and I took on all kinds of scary things, with people that make me feel safe. Unlike “the last supper” where a connection has been betrayed (by Judas), this painting captures a new tradition. Bread (Takis) and wine (Smirnof) are being passed around in the Church Parking lot, and while we now have jobs and apartments where we feed one another real meals (body) and IPA’s (blood) the principle is the same,we will always have a little bit of ourselves in common.

Firsts by Isabella Sabala