Kiya is an HTA Waipahu senior with drawing pencils in one hand and a future in art firmly in her sights.
Kiya started sketching when she was very young, and her illustrations have found homes on the cover of a school planner, a performance brochure, a school wall — she even has a coloring book for sale on Amazon.
More recently, and with the encouragement of her HTA teacher Ms. Boehning, Kiya has found a new well-spring of inspiration — and success — entering competitions.
This month, she was awarded the grand prize in the 12th Annual Youth Arts Challenge, which is part of the Institute on Violence, Abuse and Training’s annual Hawai‘i summit.
In February, she took the top prize in the Grade 12 category of the Mālama Hawai’i Art Contest.
And her creative shaka design also won the state “I Voted” Sticker Design Competition and was printed onto nearly 60,000 stickers that were handed out to Hawai‘i students voting in November’s mock election.
Kiya says she loves the challenge of the competitions.
“They bring out the best in me and make me want to try harder,” she says. “I’ve done illustrations that I never knew I could do. Even if I don’t win a contest or competition, I’m still proud of what I created because, in the end, all that matters to me is that I’m happy with how it turned out.”
And art is definitely in Kiya’s future. She’s got her eyes on a degree in fine arts and business. And she’d love to travel the world, paint murals, or perhaps become a children’s book illustrator or a graphic designer.
