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My name is Melanie Marin. I am a 17-year-old Mexican-American residing in Astoria, Queens. Some things I care about are my dog and learning about barriers to low-income or first-generation students to a higher education. Students in the NYC public school system inspire the ideas I care about because a lot of students are low income and first generation students. College applications also inspire the ideas I care about because college applications create a financial burden to families as well as a struggle in general for first-generation students in numerous ways and it’s important we figure out ways to eliminate these barriers to a higher education.
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Melanie Marin, Familial Roots, 2022
“The Beginning of the End” by Kevin Beasely shows a photograph of a woven basket printed onto cotton t-shirts. The woven basket represents the connections of Kevin Beasley’s family history and connections to this object. The woven basket in Beasley’s artwork was used to collect cotton along with slabs collected from the cotton near his family property in Virginia. In my own artwork, a tree’s roots are connected to a woven basket. The roots of the tree connect the historical origin of the woven basket to Beasley’s family history. The woven basket replicates the same basket shown in Beasley’s artwork.
