“I entered the Laguna beach art festival with an elephant that I made, and it was a combination of paper mâché and plaster that was painted on the surface. I submitted that to the Art Festival and I won first place in my high school division, in the junior sculpture division. I started taking sculpture my freshman year, and I liked it so much I decided to take advanced sculpture my sophomore year. That’s when I made the elephant, and on the back there is a map of Africa and there’s elephants on the map. They represent where elephants are most endangered , and where the largest elephant conservation center is in the world. The whole project was based off of the elephant parade which is a global charity that brings an elephant parade where celebrities sponsor artists to paint life size sculptures of an elephants. I took the message of the parade to heart and decided to apply that to my elephant and show that in the artwork.”