Grade 7 Calgary student wins international art competition

A Grade 7 student from Calgary took home an award in an international art competition

Claire Kim, 12, won first place in her age category in the Science without Borders Challenge hosted by the Khaled Bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation.

The 2024 theme was 'Hidden Wonders of the Deep' where artists 11 to 19 years old were challenged to portray the beauty and wonder of life in the deep sea.

The contest is designed to promote ocean conservation, and Kim and her private art teacher Ted Lee did a lot of research to come up with the right composition.

"I wanted to show that the deep ocean is not all about scary or ugly creatures and the deep sea can also be like mesmerizing and very beautiful," she said.

"We did some research about the deep sea and so we came up with a few animals we wanted to incorporate in the piece and we came up with a lot of different compositions."

Amy Heemsoth, the director of education and COO of the Khaled Bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, said more than 1,700 young people entered from 82 countries around the world this year.

"We're an ocean conservation non-profit located in the United States and we study tropical and marine ecosystems all around the world," she said.

"One of our goals is to also educate youth and other people of all age groups about the ocean and we utilize this Science without Borders Challenge art competition to do that."

Kim said she and Lee had to narrow down the amount of sea creatures they could include and used reference photos for accuracy.

"I made them a little bit more vibrant," she said. "Because it's in the deep sea you can't necessarily see the colour so I drew an angler fish to have a light source to show the vibrant colours that you probably cannot see without the light."

Lee said he's proud of the work that Kim put into the contest piece that resulted in winning her age category.

"She's a very hard worker, Claire has an exceptionally creative and artistic mind, she is proactive about social and environmental issues," he said.

"My idea for teaching is not only the technique, so how do you draw well, how do you paint well, that's the kind of basic, my idea (for) teaching is how do you make a critical mind detect a problem and solution."

Lee said Kim enters many contests because that forces her to paint outside of her comfort level and she can learn from that.

"They have a concept so we read the concept well, and read many times, and then we research and then how do you figure it out," he said. "She's really focused when she does something, that's what I like, I'm so proud of her."

Heemsoth said Kim will take home a prize of $500 for her beautifully crafted piece.

"If you look at the artwork, it gives you that feeling of the mysterious wonders of the deep," she said.

"It's creepy, but yet it's beautiful at the same time and that was really the whole point in the theme of this year's contest was to portray the beauty of these very strange animals in these very weird ecosystems and the deep sea."

Heemsoth said the competition is in its 12th year and encourages people to look at ocean conservation in a new light.

"Maybe afterwards they'll go watch a documentary about the deep sea or whatever the conservation topic may be," she said.

"Maybe they will go and take action themselves and do some sort of action towards conserving the ocean and so those are some of the outcomes that we hope to get, I do think that it's making a huge difference."

Learn more about the foundation's work on its website.