Avery Burns

I was the tallest kid in middle school, and yet I had never felt so small. It was my first art show, 2018, sixth grade. It wasn’t truly an art show but a winter middle school get-together, to brag to our parents, to stand proud next to our art pieces, play our instruments, and sing our songs. My art piece wasn’t so much a physical piece but rather a video, a time-lapse to be specific, that would show on the projector in our auditorium.

Blaring music shook the room with every beat as Joni Mitchell screamed the lyrics to “Big Yellow Taxi” at a decibel too loud, echoing off every corner as he screamed the chorus over and over. When it ended the conglomerate of adults I saw as giants didn’t clap immediately, they didn’t know what they saw. When I came out from behind the shadows, from behind the curtain, they clapped. They clapped as I stood beneath the video projected above me, and yet I still felt small.

At the end of the show, I showed my parents the physical piece. A small thing that was just bigger than my palm, made of layered cardboard and too much hot glue. Painted on the cardboard was the Earth, smiling like a classically made smiley face, but dripping blood with factory smoke bellowing out. The piece was titled “Still Fighting” a protest of sorts to climate change and a reminder to those in the audience. And yet no matter how impactful the piece was I still felt small.

It probably doesn’t come as a surprise to state that I’ve grown a lot since sixth grade. Through turbulence and trepidation I’ve grown as a person, and so has the World around me. We suffered a pandemic, we fought to recover, and the political field of America has grown more precarious each year. With all this chaos I lost that protesting spirit that sixth-grade me had. I struggled mentally and physically and the feeling of inadequacy overtook me. Now a Senior in high school I can say I no longer feel small, I know I’m small. A grain of flesh compared to the vastness of the universe, an ant to the mighty mountain, and yet no matter how small a canary is, how small we are, we can still sing a beautiful song. I know I am small, a mouse in the commotion that is our world. But I know my worth, I know that you can’t make a choir without all the voices.

Today I use my voice in little ways, protesting and fighting for what I believe in the way that sixth grade me would be proud of: through my art. I’ve started a project with underfunded middle schools in Hillsborough County donating posters of women in STEM to inspire the younger generations, on almost every weekend I make yarn out of old grocery bags to be crocheted into mats and blankets for the homeless, and my AP portfolio focuses around the undermining of women each title a derogatory term against women. I know that all of this has been done before, that people have fought on almost all the fronts that I wish to, but I don’t seek appraisal nor to be the center stage, just a canary singing her ballad for anyone willing to listen.

• Young @ Art participant 2021
• Participant of the Tampa Museum of Art 6th Annual Student Exhibition 2021
• Hillsborough Community College participant in the Galyx Schenecker Art Infinitum 2023
• Participant of the Dali Student Surrealist Art Exhibit 2024
• Honorable Mention in four categories in Scholastic Art Competition 2024
• Florida Junior Classical State Latin Forum 5th place in Digital Art 2023
• Florida Junior Classical Regional Latin Forum 1st place in Digital Art 2024