She is a dedicated student, a JV basketball player, and an outstanding artist. She has won two Gedenk Awards, distinguished Scholastic Art Awards, and contributed many beautiful artworks to Kent. She took AP Studio Art last year  and is taking AP Photography this year while also  creating her own portfolio for her college application.

She is Erin Cho, a senior who has spent three years at Kent standing out with her art. Erin started doing art in the 7th grade. Her works are often presented in mixed-media combinations of 2D and 3D.

Erin uses different materials in her artworks such as pencil, charcoal, watercolor and acrylic.  “I’m trying to find something that really interests me,” says Erin, “and I do different types of art.” The huge painting of ice-cream balls in the art studio is one of Erin’s works, which took her two weeks to finish.

Erin says that she prefers to paint people more than objects, and most of her works are blue. “My arts tends to be down-toned,” she smiled. The topic Erin concentrates most in is slave trading and human trafficking. In fact, two of her collages, named “African Intolerance” won out from 320,000 works and won her the Gedenk Award during her sophomore year.

“African Intolerance” is two 18 inch x 18 inch pieces, combining newspaper and pencil sketching. Erin drew her imagery on the newspaper and incorporated  haunting texts like “save me” and “suffer” throughout the work. She then drew iron grids that incarcerated an African woman, whose helpless eye is looking at the viewer through the bars; half of the woman’s face is hidden, creating a sense of restriction. The despair and agony presented in her face seeps through the work and into the hearts of the viewers.

Erin’s inspiration came to her as she “happened to do research about African people’s lives and human trafficking”. This project remains “one of her main topics for now. I’ve been actually working for three years on this,” says Erin, “sympathy is probably the prime motivation [for my works].”