Belonging and Diversity Virtual Art Gallery

Deans Award - Together in Christ
By Mary Bingham

The inspiration for this design comes from Christ as the only one who can knit people together in unity and love. Each strand in this piece represents an individual striving to follow the covenant path and Christ's example. Each one of us plays an important role in God's plan. We do not always see the part we play, but we must have faith and a love of God to continue enduring to the end. We are all united by love of God and His gospel to create the beautiful picture of salvation. Each strand is different and serves a unique purpose just like every soul on either side of the veil.

1st Place Winner - With His Hands
By Kayla Homer

My art depicts the Y, representing the student body at BYU being knit together by Christ's hands. The Y has a honeycomb, ceramic-like pattern that symbolizes strength, unity, beauty, and working together. This design element is important because the different brown and beige colors within this pattern represent different skin tones, and the pops of color represent our other differences including backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences.

With the theme of love and unity, I had to include Christ in this art piece because He is the ultimate example of loving everyone for who they are and bringing people together. Our hearts can be knit together in love and unity as we embrace our differences fully, completely eliminate bias and judgment, and follow the example of Christ who, with His hands, can bring us together.

2nd Place Winner - Zion
By Carolina Corrales

This design is inspired by the Japanese art kintsugi (golden joinery), also called kintsukuroi (golden repair). The technique consists of uniting broken pottery pieces with a bonding mixture of lacquer and gold. The special binding elevates the value of the original piece by using precious metal and the skills of the artisan.

I've always seen kintsugi as a visual metaphor for Christ's atonement. His suffering and love are like the lacquer and gold that can mend broken lives and societies. This piece combines ceramics representing different cultures, races, and nationalities. The gold binding the shards represents Christ's love that inspires people to be peacemakers in their personal lives and strive for a more harmonious society. Christ's love heals wounds and knits contrite hearts in bonds of charity and understanding while pointing all to peace.

Making Purple
By Elizabeth (Betsy) Richardson

My art is a visual representation of what I feel it means to connect to someone else. We are each surrounded by our own colors, experiences, cultures, and emotions. When we interact and truly get to know someone else, we make something greater than the sum of our parts, just like red and blue make purple. To create a Zion community we need to truly get to know each other and share our experiences, effectively knitting our hearts together.

Associate Dean Award - Eternal Embrace
By Aliyah Nystul

This work embodies the blessed reassurance that Christ's golden promise can be ours as we come together, reflect upon our purpose, act upon His admonitions and fully remember that we are all worthy of His "Eternal Embrace." I sought to craft a piece that embodies the beauty of His love knitting our hearts together. My aspiration is for others to see a reflection of themselves within this creation as they turn their body and heart toward Christ.

3rd Place Winner - Unity's Tapestry
By Spencer John Van de Graaff

My art is inspired by the need and desire to belong and be loved that I believe everyone has. We are all unique and have special abilities and talents that can be used to bless one another's lives. To capture that idea, I chose to hand build ceramic hands glazed in multi-colors, representing the uniqueness of every individual. The hands are busily knitting a heart representing the good work that can be done as unique talents and abilities are shared with others. As we each set a goal to treat one another with love, respect, and human kindness, while celebrating the diversity of the individual, we can do much good and magnify our potential.

Flowers of the Heart
By Citlalli Zavala

My art takes various flowers from different cultures and displays them on top of a heart. The flowers pictured are: nopal, sunflower, cherry blossom, hibiscus, royal bluebell, marigold, and bird of paradise. The design relates to the theme of "Hearts Knit Together in Unity and Love" by depicting these flowers from multiple cultures overlapping one another thereby imitating the idea that all people are connected and that there is beauty within each culture and together they all make up the heart.

Hearts Knit Together in Unity and Love
By Gissella Nicole Medina

For this piece, I felt inspired to paint about Lehi's dream. Nothing is grander and of more value than the love God the Father has for His children as well as the love our Savior freely gives to us. For that reason, I included both Christ and Heavenly Father in my painting. The tree of life is the center of the design to show that even though many people do not hold my same beliefs, I know we are all connected by the roots of love to one another and to our Savior. I have seen that connection in my life and on my mission. The people getting to the tree are from all walks of life and these connections stem from our struggles and difficulties.

Associate Dean Award - Fear and Great Joy
By Sophia Reynolds

My art depicts the four named women from Mark 16 and Luke 24 who found the open tomb on the morning of Christ's resurrection: Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Joana, and Salome. These biblical women represent the many unnamed women—past, present, and future—who allow their faith in Jesus Christ to knit their hearts together in love and unity.

In the piece itself, a circle within a square symbolically represents divinity, eternity, and perfection. This holy shape is used in the architecture and design of many temples and refers to where heaven and earth meet. These four women sought their Savior, He who bridges the gap between earth and heaven. The splotchy, patchwork art style I've chosen symbolizes separate and unique pieces working together as one great whole.

Love's Radience
By Sienna Marie Stevens

My inspiration behind this piece comes from the knowledge that God equally loves all of His children, and we are commanded to love one another as He loves us. The divine radiating figure in this piece is purposefully placed in the center of the painting to remind us to keep Christ at the center of our hearts. When we view others through the lens of Christ, we are filled with transcendent love toward them, and this is the ultimate uniting factor. I believe that we can lift-up those around us with love that knits our hearts together as God's children.

Diversity is Divine
By Madison McArthur Ashton

I recently heard a quote in one of my classes by the author Melinda Wheelwright Brown, which inspired this piece. She states, "If Heaven is the prototype for this beautiful Earth, surely diversity is divine." Our differences are divinely inspired. Even though we are all different, we are all made of the same stuff by tender, loving creators, our Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother.

This piece relates to the theme "Hearts Knit Together in Unity and Love" because we are all knit together by our divinity. Whether black or white, male or female, old or young, we are united by our creators.

Love in Dialogue
By Sara Knowlton

My art is inspired by the conversations I have been able to participate in as a volunteer with the Belonging and Diversity Committee's classroom panels. These panels reminded me that love can be found anywhere, even across differing opinions, backgrounds, and ideologies. I've learned that as we take time to listen to those who are different from us with an open mind, our hearts may be filled with understanding and love that transcends our differences.

Associate Dean Award - It Takes Many Hands
By Desarae Millet

My art piece applies the theme: "Hearts Knit Together in Unity and Love" through a hand-sewn collage of fabric depicting many diverse hands working together to form three hearts. In addition, the words "listen," "learn," "forgive," "trust," "build," and "unity" are sewn into the piece, which add another hidden message: these are the attributes and actions a community must embody in order to become unified and filled with love. The various colors of fabric and differing shapes and sizes of the hands represent the need for people of all ages, gender, culture, ethnicity, religion, etc to come together to create love within a community. It is only through working together with a focus on love that true unity found.

Opening a Closed Door
By Laura Greco

I did a simple pencil drawing entitled "Opening a Closed Door." When I considered the theme "Hearts Knit Together in Unity and Love" what came to mind was simple, but important.

I have not had consistent love in my life in the usual way. My parents were abusive and were not there for me growing up and most of my friends came and went. Outside of my Heavenly Parents and my Elder Brother, I have not felt as if someone truly cared about me until I met my best friend. We were not immediately close, but have developed a strong friendship over the past five years throughout our missions and our time at BYU.

When I thought of the theme, I immediately thought of this friend and how we have continuously strengthened our empathy and understanding for each other by knitting our hearts together in unity and love. We have found a connection amidst misunderstanding and hurt. I am not an open person and therefore the person in the picture with the back turned represents myself and the other girl represents my friend who always willingly offers a hug, even if it is unwanted, and cries with me. The rain represents a strong connection between my Heavenly Father and me and all of the blessings I have been constantly given in my life amidst the struggles that are often never ending.

Although I struggled to connect to the theme, I found a simple way to express my own story within my own journey of knitting my heart to others in unity and love. We are all people and although I often do not believe I deserve love, I am sure that every single other person on this earth is deserving of love from others simply because they are human beings that live and breath on an earth created by a loving Father in Heaven. We all deserve a person in our lives, whether that is a parent, friend, or spouse who will give us a hug when we are closed off to the rest of the world

12 Tribes Together
By Kyli Fox Soug

"Twelve Tribes Together" captures the ethereal essence of how I envision the collaboration and interconnectedness among the 12 tribes, transcending both space and time. Despite the historical dispersal and separation of the tribes, their unity remains intact in the eyes of Heavenly Father. As hearts are bound by unity and love, there exists a profound yearning for reunion and a sense of belonging, not as individual tribes, but as an integrated and affectionate whole.

Heart Quilted in Love
By Kourtney Glenn

I am a future Family and Consumer Science teacher, and I love to sew! My inspiration was a quilt that takes a lot of mismatched fabrics and makes them all come together in a cohesive way, although they may not appear to work well together. I named it "Heart Quilted in Love," getting my inspiration from the scripture. The fabrics are all different, but they come together to form a heart. This relates to the theme because in a true Zion society, we all join as one for our common goals, even when we as individuals are different.

Together
By David Higbee

"Together" is inspired by mandala configurations present in western cultures such as the Hindu and Buddhist traditions. The hearts are all slightly different but their tails point to the center of the circle. This configuration represents how all hearts are different, but become one as they come together in love. The piece is a reminder of charity as being the essential character trait of Heavenly Father and reminds us that we are capable of cultivating that within ourselves.

Love is to be Shared
By Sarah Caesar

Love is not a priority anymore. We are in a time of life where split families, long-term grudges, and hateful comments are considered normal and acceptable. Showing kindness and love is considered weird and a sign of weakness. The focus on being individual and prioritizing yourself has become a lifestyle of loneliness. In my art, I hope to show that there is hope to change this lifestyle. I believe that my peers and I can begin to create a change. We have the power to make love a priority again. We can be a generation of acceptance. Being here at BYU has shown me that all of us have the ability to grow our love, and not only that, we have the power to pass that love on to our friends and soon our children. We learned our love from our parents and past mentors, and soon we will be those parents and past mentors. My hope is that we continue to share this love with the next generation and that we can be united through our want for love.

Zion is a Group Project
By Sydni P.K.(Pualeilani Kiyoko) Nakamoto

In terms of inspiration, I started with a literal approach to the prompt "Hearts knit together." From there, I thought more about Zion, which is about actively creating a better community of appreciation and inclusion.

In this piece, there are five pairs of hands of various colors that come together to create. The scriptures talk about us all being God's children. Black and white, bond and free, male and female, and I wanted to reflect some of the diversity of those who make Zion.

Zion is a group project, wherein one person cannot work alone. Zion is less about one strong voice and more about one great harmony, wherein each voice is equally important to the sound of music. Whatever the analogy, we are better when we can admire each other's strengths and talents.

Everything here was hand-drawn before it was printed, everything made with intention, just as God is intentional with how He makes us and the opportunities He gives us to grow. We may be imperfect, and we may think we're broken. We may make mistakes, but we can be united in our efforts to shape our experiences into progress. We all have something we can bring to the table.

Knit Together as One
By Tanner (Tanna) Skye Shoemaker

This past Summer, I traveled to Kisumu, Kenya with a group of individuals from all over North America to do humanitarian work. While there, we endeavored to construct additional classrooms for an overly crowded, underfunded school. We served with the intent to impact the lives of the people there, but I quickly learned that these people were impacting my heart even more. I've never met people so willing to love strangers that looked so different from themselves. They seemed to have unconditional love and accepted us into their community with open arms. Young girls would run and give me a hug each time they saw me, it didn't matter that we were different, it just mattered that we were working together. We were united in our mission and in our belief of God, that brought us together. I can't help but feel that this is what Zion is like. This piece is inspired by them.

With the inspiration in mind, this piece represents many people coming together as one. The singular heart is a symbol of unity and love among the entire human race. The heart lays on a white quilt, symbolizing that the people are woven and knit together. The piece as a whole is a representation of the hope of Zion; a people of one heart, one mind, and united as Children of Christ (Moses 18:7 & 4 Nephi 1:17). It reflects how a community of diversity in color, race, size, and heart, can create much beauty as they come together.

The Hearts of the Children
By Aletta Day

My piece is titled "The Hearts of the Children." This references the verse that the angel Moroni quotes to Joseph Smith in Joseph Smith - History 1:39: "the hearts of the children will turn to their fathers." One of the first things I thought of when I heard the theme was family history. I'm an avid lover of doing family history, although it isn't my major. When we do family history and temple work, I firmly believe that our hearts turn to our ancestors and are knit together in love.

The golden tree represents the family and its history. In my piece, the two hearts shown within the tree are physically knit together by threads. They also reach out to other trees and other families. The textile used in the background is another emphasis of how we should be knit together in unity and love.

Eternal Families
By Kylie Gottfredson

This art piece celebrates eternal families and the unbreakable bonds of love that bind us together as one eternal family. It depicts a couple with a daughter embracing in the temple. I have always been captivated by the illusion that is created when you face two mirrors toward each other. The endless reflection's profound meaning this takes in the temple sealing rooms have always had an impact on me. Employing a 3D element, I aimed to add depth to the artwork, allowing viewers to immerse themselves in the artwork and feel like they are looking in the two mirrors facing each other. I intentionally chose a color palette limited to black and white because I wanted to encourage the viewers to fill in the colors and images that come to mind when they think of their ancestors and family. The black and white also provide a stark contrast to the red to emphasize the symbolism of the red string of fate. There is a Japanese legend of an invisible red string connecting destined souls by their pinky that can never be severed. I felt a deep connection with this idea of a string that brings hearts together. The string, depicted in an infinite circle, serves as a visual representation of the enduring ties that bind families together across generations and lifetimes. Through this piece I wanted to evoke an encompassing sense of harmony and unity that is symbolizing the eternal and enduring nature of love.