2024-2025

Massachusetts

Winners

Elementary School

Hazel’s Artist Statement: “In my piece, I made sure to provide many things that I would imagine our world would look like in the future without using all of those fossil fuels we use today. The reason I added solar panels, south facing houses, and water dams was because I wanted people to visualize the more efficient ways to use energy in sustainable ways. This opportunity to share my artwork with the world made me think of how creative I can be with how I draw, read, write, think, and visualize these things of the future. What I learned from this entry was that with the world getting hotter and causing more extreme weather, we need new discoveries to create sunshine, more electricity, and electric cars for cheaper, and a healthier environment. One thing that inspired me to compete in this was to encourage people to take time while walking around our world now to imagine how we can improve our surroundings. We can do this and much more by getting rid of the dirty fossil fuels, and working together to change our surroundings so that we can earn our place here. This is what earned energy would look like in the future in my perspective. What I am trying to say in my artwork is that life in the future can be different and people can and should help this world become a better place, even without using new things.”

Alex’s Artist Statement: “I showed clean energy which includes solar panels and Wind turbines. And a clean environment around it. If we stop using fossil fuels for 20-30 years, we will prevent pollution in our community. My idea: is that we will probably use Solar energy since it’s considered natural. This may also fix some problems like the loud sounds our cars make, the traffic and stress for drivers. What are you trying to say in your work? To make everyone use clean energy. As pollution problems are solved the people will get happier. Why did you create your artwork in the way that you did? I think using clean energy is gonna be healthy for everyone and make them go outside more often to enjoy clean nature. Did the art competition encourage you to work with art materials in a new way? I used a new technique called pencil water-coloring to make colors brighter and make my artwork look like a poster. What do you hope people will learn from your artwork? I hope people want to see our planet cleaner, healthier, and safer for kids. What inspired you? I love our city and I decided to present it the way I would like to see it for as long as possible.”

Middle School

Stella’s Artist Statement: “One human emits 16 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year! This is warming the air and water on Earth, leading to extreme weather such as flooding. These events are becoming more destructive and powerful, and are increasing the demands for jobs such as city gardeners to adapt to flooding.

I am focusing on flooding from rain. Flooding causes property damage, crop loss, erosion, and sometimes, death. As the air is warming, it is able to hold more moisture. When the air releases the moisture as rain, there is more rain than the ground can handle. The water overflows into homes, washes away soil, and drowns plants. In severe cases, families are forced to evacuate, and objects get swept away.

However, city gardeners can help mitigate flooding. They plant green spaces and green roofs in the city. Some plants that would help are ferns, hostas, rosemary, and daylily. All of these plants have deep roots, which form a barrier underground, slowing the water. In addition, roots aerate soil, creating channels for the water to flow deeper underground. Last, the ground would absorb more runoff, and store it as groundwater.

What I hope people will learn from my drawing is, to solve climate change, we will need to work with nature, not against it. Instead of destroying nature, we need to embrace it. Nature can help, but first we need to accept the help. In conclusion, to mitigate flooding, we need jobs like city gardeners to plant green roofs and green spaces.”

Suraaj’s Artist Statement: “Did you know that the last decade has been the hottest over the last 125,000 years? Since more than 70% of our earth is oceans, understanding the impact of warming is important. Through my artwork, I wish to educate people on the different ways that plants and animals have adapted to warming oceans. While researching, I discovered there are three important ways they adapt and survive. The first is acquiring physical adaptations such as shrinking in size, which helps sea animals like fish and turtles use less oxygen and stay alive. Warm water holds less oxygen than cold water, because higher the temperature, the less soluble the oxygen becomes. The next adaptation which happens due to a warming ocean is regeneration and growth changes. Species like phytoplankton and other algae are able to reproduce and grow faster in warmer oceans, leading to other species having more food, helping the entire food chain. The third adaptation that plants and animals do to address the warming of oceans is migrating to cooler or deeper places during the warmer months and reversing this migration during the cooler months. For example, in the United States corals have been found north of the Atlantic coast of Florida in the summer. Ultimately, although warming oceans have negatively impacted our marine life; nature has still found a way to thrive. We have to do our part in reducing global warming otherwise the marine ecosystem may be forced to continue finding new ways to adapt.”

High School

Rylee’s Artist Statement: “In my artwork, I addressed the question of: what jobs will be needed to adapt to more extreme weather? I created an illustration displaying a person wearing a headlamp and looking over four different examples of climate, and showing factors that affect it like precipitation, temperature, and time of day. This person is meant to represent a climatologist, which is someone who studies the Earth’s atmospheric conditions and weather patterns over long periods of time. I believe that the field of climatology is a very important piece in handling the problem of extreme weather. It provides data that is crucial to understanding the changing climate, such as past weather trends and how they’ve changed, as well as vulnerable areas and how they could be impacted. With this information, we have the ability to predict future changes in the climate, allowing us to develop plans to take action towards it. Before researching my topic, the field of climatology wasn’t something that I knew much about since it isn’t really mainstream. After learning more about it, I realized that it is basically the key to making adaptations towards coming extreme weather patterns due to climate change. How are we supposed to make any changes if we don’t understand what’s happening to our climate in the first place? This is what I hope people will be able to take away from my artwork.”

Alexis’ Artist Statement: “I chose to answer the question of what our cities will look like when we are no longer dependent on fossil fuels. I depicted a field of solar panels showing that we will be using green energy instead.”

Massachusetts

Runners-Up

Elementary School

Richard’s Artist Statement: “I addressed the challenge question by showing the difference between a world that recycles and a world that doesn’t recycle. I am trying to say that if we don’t recycle and take care of our world now, it will get weaker and weaker. The reason why I made my artwork like this is to inspire others to use take action to restore our plant such as using reusable bags and clean energy and avoid using gasoline whenever we can. Yes, it made me do a comparison drawing and I have never done this before. I hope that people will not use fossil fuels and use electricity coming from wind turbines and hydroelectric power plants. I also want to encourage people to use recyclable bags and containers like tote bags and reusable plastic containers. I learned we have the power to change how our planet looks in the future if we take action to change our ways. I live near Merrimack River and my family goes for nature walks and every time we walk there, we see piles of garbage everywhere we go. Even on the path we see garbage. This really concerns me because I am usually a nature person, exploring the woods, and I hate to see it treated with disrespect. I hope my art will have a big impact on the world and my town.”

Darla’s Artist Statement: “I picked the third question about plants and animals adapting to a warmer ocean because I like sea animals. I thought that a good answer would be for the fish to go in some cooler areas of the water so they could not be so hot. In my poster the fish swimming in the ocean are really hot. One fish who is in a shaded cave is saying it's cooler in here, inviting the other fish to come in, while two dolphins are just sad because they have no shade from the hot sun and hot water and the jellyfish are just thinking I'm a little hot. I was going for an underwater theme. I chose a color that is fish like for the fish and I made some fish, some seaweed, some coral, and some dolphins and jellyfish. And then I thought if I could make some caves some of the fish would be hot and sweaty and some could be nice in the cooler water in the cave. I just tried to color it so the water is light so you can see the darker objects easier. In that cave you can see that it has some shade so the fish can stay cooler. I hope that people learn from my artwork that when fish go in different places they can feel different things. If the water gets warmer and warmer the fish have to move to cooler water. I learned that when temperatures rise it hurts the sea animals, like the fish”

Katerina’s Artist Statement: “I think most of us know what climate change is. The Earth is getting unhealthier by the minute and it’s because of the little things we’re all doing. In my work I’m trying to show how much of a difference we can make if we all pitch in. That's why I created it in the way I did. It clearly shows the difference we can all help make reality. The art competition helped me become more creative with my work. Instead of only colored pencils, I chose to use bright vibrant crayons. I hope that people will learn that it is possible to stop climate change if we work together. I can’t make a big difference on my own, but together WE can. We can all pitch in. We can all make a difference. That’s why we should cut down on fossil fuels and why turning off the lights or turning off the water faucet makes a difference. During this project I not only learned what we can do but what might happen if we didn’t. If we don't all help, our Earth will become dead and dry. My inspiration for this project was that I knew I would be making a difference. I knew that I would help the world become a better place.”

Middle School

Alicia’s Artist Statement: “Did you know that each human emits 16 tons of the heat trapping carbon dioxide each year. This is warming the air and water on Earth leading to many extreme weather events, one of them being flooding. These events are becoming more destructive and powerful and are increasing the demands for many jobs such as civil engineers now needing to adapt to floods. A flood is when an overflowing amount of water goes onto normally dry land. This is very dangerous as, first, it can cause a mass loss of life and, second, can cause structural damage to roadways and houses making it impossible to travel. One major job that needs to adapt is civil engineers. Civil engineers design, supervise, and construct building and infrastructure projects. Now that we are experiencing more extreme floods, civil engineers will need to adapt by building more durable buildings for example by building homes on stilts and making other elevated structures to stay working in a flood. I hope that from my artwork people will learn about the dangers of flooding and that from that we can adapt to the changes in the weather. It is clear that we need more jobs such as civil engineers to help us adapt to the destruction that extreme weather, specifically flooding, is causing. In conclusion, we will need the job of civil engineering to help us adapt to the now more dangerous levels of flooding.”

Anvi’s Artist Statement: “As our Earth continues to warm I am hoping to educate others about jobs that are needed to help our communities adapt to extreme weather events such as floods. Floods cause water to overflow onto dry land causing water to spread everywhere because of this buildings, homes, and public services like buses are damaged, also people's lives are at stake. The jobs we need to adapt to floods are hydrologists and construction workers because hydrologists can study water and predict by the patterns where floods will most likely occur next and then they can tell the construction workers where to build protection for the flood damage. One thing that would help us adapt to floods is if we built the houses on stilts, then when floods occur the water will not destroy our houses immediately and this will leave us some time to prepare. I hope people will learn from my artwork that there are ways to adapt to floods and that the damage caused by floods can be reduced. In conclusion, we need more hydrologists to help us adapt to the disastrous destruction of buildings and homes destroyed by floods since average global sea level has increased eight inches by the last 150 years.”

Ford’s Artist Statement: “Hi. I'm Ford Choate, and I'm entering this poster into this competition for some fun. The question I chose was: What will our community look like when we are not using fossil fuels for energy in 20 - 30 years? Well, there will be too many differences from the present to count, but here are a few l've chosen to specify on in my project. First, there will be less plastic packaging. Since plastic is a byproduct of fossil fuels, we will use less of it as the years march on. We may use more metal packaging, perhaps, or cardboard. Secondly, there will probably be more A.I. We are already developing it now, so it will probably be much bigger in 20 - 30 years (note the robot). Thirdly, there will definitely be solar panels and wind turbines. We will be using more clean energy in the future once we've lessened our use of fossil fuels. Fortunately, we've already started this process, building clean - energy producers all over the world. Fourth, there will be a lot more electric cars in the future, hopefully. Charger stations will replace gas stations, once we start using more electric cars. This concludes my presentation on the main points I am covering in this project detailing the future.”

Priyamvada’s Artist Statement: “My extreme weather event is flooding. Flooding is when there is an overflow of water in a place that is normally dry. It causes the slightest to the largest amount of damage. It impacts by causing loss of life, structural damage ,and destroys food sources too. My job is to have more landscapers and workers adding rain barrels, french ditches, rain gardens, and runoff reduction systems. These changes are required because the runoff reduction system will collect the water and drop it down to the rain barrels. And the French ditches and the rain gardens work together. Other water that doesn't get to a set place and is running gets sucked into the french ditches and flows to a rain garden and other places that correctly dispose of the water gets infiltrated into the ground. Each year a few parts of our world suffer from flooding whereas on the other side of the world some place is suffering from a drought and is desperately in need of water. In short, we need to use our water as properly as we can. I was inspired to make this drawing because the more people who know and understand about these facilities the more they use it. This will help us make our world a better place. It is clear that we need more jobs such as adding rain barrels, french ditches, rain gardens, and runoff reduction systems to help us adapt to the destruction that extreme weather such as flooding is causing.”

Zoya’s Artist Statement: “Hello. My name is Zoya Pathan. I’m in 7th grade, and today I’d like to talk about my artwork titled 'ecommunity'. This year, the challenge question I chose to answer was - What will your community look like when we are not using fossil fuels for energy in 20-30 years? To address this question, I chose to show multiple eco-friendly alternatives for fossil fuels, such as solar and wind power. I added these innovative and modern ideas to my artwork to show that despite heavily depending on fossil fuels, which increase pollution, today, this can be changed by switching energy sources. The excessive green in the piece is to emphasize the ‘eco’ part of 'ecommunity', and the simple but memorable design allows for quick absorption of the topic. Through my artwork, I’m trying to relay the message that there are alternatives to fossil fuels, and I hope people will learn that they can lead to a better future for us all. I also studied alternatives to non-renewable fuels and found one that seemed the most promising- biodiesel, which I drew being sold in a gas station next to electric charging stations. My science teacher inspired me to make this piece as she went over biofuels in class one day, challenging us to think of our own solution to the deteriorating supply of fossil fuels. Thank you for reading, and I hope you keep in mind that with scientific research and hard work, our Earth can be changed for the better.”

Tanushri’s Artist Statement: “Did you know that the last decade has been the hottest over the last 125,000 years? Since more than 70% of our earth is oceans, understanding the impact of warming is important. Through my artwork, I wish to educate people on the different ways that plants and animals have adapted to warming oceans. While researching, I discovered there are three important ways they adapt and survive. The first is acquiring physical adaptations such as shrinking in size, which helps sea animals like fish and turtles use less oxygen and stay alive. Warm water holds less oxygen than cold water, because higher the temperature, the less soluble the oxygen becomes. The next adaptation which happens due to a warming ocean is regeneration and growth changes. Species like phytoplankton and other algae are able to reproduce and grow faster in warmer oceans, leading to other species having more food, helping the entire food chain. The third adaptation that plants and animals do to address the warming of oceans is migrating to cooler or deeper places during the warmer months and reversing this migration during the cooler months. For example, in the United States corals have been found north of the Atlantic coast of Florida in the summer. Ultimately, although warming oceans have negatively impacted our marine life; nature has still found a way to thrive. We have to do our part in reducing global warming otherwise the marine ecosystem may be forced to continue finding new ways to adapt.”

Yile’s Artist Statement: “How can plants and animals adapt to a warmer Ocean. Amphitrite, Poseidon's wife, who loved the ocean and treated marine creatures like kids. But, if humans keep overusing earth resources, causing global warning, I think the tender fairy will weep for the dying and vanishing sea life. So I drew a picture: on the left, a seemingly calm, but the illegal fishing destroy the biodiversity, and it lead to mutant sea animals like two headed fish and spiked squids... and a hungry eye in place of the sun, it glare at the sea, seeking profit. On the right, I drew more mutated sea creatures: jellyfish with more extra eyes and oddly colored octopuses it reflects a disrupted ecosystem. I hope everyone can I learned that: "Earth belongs to all living beings, so, let's build this world better."

High School

Max’s Artist Statement: “I addressed the question: How do plants and animals adapt to a warmer ocean? I wanted to make a statement with my work and was inspired by political satire in comics. To show how warming oceans will be an issue for marine life. Through my creation process, I became more mindful of issues caused by global warming. Just as I was reminded of the detriment global warming has on marine life, I hope to make people more aware of the changing climate. I used Adobe Illustrator to create the cartoon-like image I imagined. This project allowed me to use graphic design to learn about important issues and engage with art in a meaningful way.”

Darshell’s Artist Statement: “The question is - How can plants and animals adapt to a warmer ocean? Struck me because I think it's an issue many people don't take seriously. I wanted to help open people's eyes and help them see what's going on with the animals because of climate change. To understand that, we as people can adapt to warmer climates but many animals can't. The more I researched on this topic the more things I learned about what happens to the deep sea animals, how because of the ocean getting warmer they have to swim down to deeper oceans to get cool again. Having to change where they reproduce and live.”

Skylar’s Artist Statement: “My banner was created to explore the potential adaptations that ocean animals and plants could develop in order to cope with ocean warming. Since global warming is such a modern issue, I felt as though addressing potential consequences through ocean animal living changes would be a sufficient way of conveying this concept. In the banner itself, I drew different ways ocean animals will adapt to the warming ocean climate. The red arrows were added to portray the direction in which they will take. I also added small blurbs of text in the piece to give the viewer an insight on what species will need to do in order to survive. Throughout my research and creation of the banner, I learned that migration will be a large method of adaptation as the ocean gets warmer. This is due to the fact that most sea animals will not be able to live in warmer waters, as they have not evolved to be able to do so. Migration is a rigorous journey that most animals don't take unless absolutely necessary. Furthermore, some plants will have to change their entire growing patterns for survival. These factors spotlight the severity of oceans becoming warmer. I hope that my art piece not only educates people on the measures that ocean life will have to take so they can survive, but also encourages individuals to make a conscious effort to help prevent global warming in its entirety.”