At the center of a Twin Groves Middle School cafeteria table, an eager crowd forms around Alina Qian ’25 as she puts the finishing touches on another Notability masterpiece. Known in her grade for accepting classmates’ commissions for “chibis”—cute, stylized illustrations of people—that reflected elements of the individual’s personality, Qian’s artistry has always combined a distinctive creative style with care for others.

I’m speaking with Qian in a December phone call as her family drives back home from holiday shopping. When I ask her how long she’s been drawing, her father says “first grade!,” which Qian laughs at good-naturedly, though she herself finds the question harder to answer.

“My family owned this little whiteboard… I remember I wanted to draw so much that I would draw on the place you’re supposed to—the white area—and then I would also draw on the back of it,” Qian said. “I split it apart just to draw on the wood frame. That’s the earliest memory I have with art.”

As a traditional-medium artist working primarily with oil and acrylic paints, Qian explains that she originally liked illustrating composition for others and now has begun exploring topics more personal to her worldview. However, she’s never stopped doing the former—an oil portrait of her father titled “B+,” published in the 2023 edition of The WIT, was a personalized birthday gift for him.

“Whenever I make a mistake or any type of failure, he always gives me a really funny face, because it’s not necessarily demeaning, just kind of sour, and then he kind of moves on really easily,” Qian said. “I was reflecting on what I should title it and what he means to me as a dad. I always imagine him as a very supportive figure.”

Similarly, Qian remembers drawing cartoon characters like Pikachu and Princess Celestia for her classmates in elementary school. Shreya Gupta ’25, a close friend of Qian and fellow teammate on Stevenson’s Spoken Word Team, says that Qian is innately very expressive about her appreciation for others.

“A day does not go by where she hasn’t said ‘hi’ and spoken with three people while we walk down the hall,” Gupta said. “Alina is a number-one hype man.”

Qian’s Studio Art and Drawing teacher, Cristal Sabbagh, also calls attention to Qian’s strengths in both her inventive artistic perspectives as well as her open personality. Sabbagh conveys her excitement for Qian’s future work in college and beyond.

“I’m just always super impressed by her,” Sabbagh said. “The other students see that as well—they’re like, oh gosh, she’s so humble and sweet and friendly… and even right away in Studio Art, because it’s a lot of students creating their own compositions using a lot expressive mark-making, she just always kind of pushed things beyond what was expected. I cannot wait to see what she does in the future, because what she’s already doing here is just, like, bonkers.”

According to Qian, in her AP 2-D Art and Design portfolio, she merged her exploration of her personal identity with a hope that others can see themselves in her work. Art, she believes, is a language that one can become fluent in.

“I am me, and I care about me, but even beyond that, I care about people like me,” Qian said. “If I’m able to express the problems that are confronted by people like me, it’s a good way to bring awareness to the issue. Art is like communicating an issue or a feeling that you can’t really express in words.”

Sabbagh agrees that once art is out “into the ether, into the world,” whether posted online or in an exhibit, the beauty of art is the infinite possibilities of the audience’s interpretations. Many people can see the art piece and portray it in millions of ways, making each piece more and more unique.

“That’s really incredible about art, that so many people can come to it from different avenues, enriching what the initial possibilities were, affecting people in so many different ways that you would have never imagined,” Sabbagh said. “I’m just happy for her to want to take on that role of creating and having other people be able to enjoy and take it in however they need to.”

Qian recounts being challenged throughout her years of artmaking to take more risks and accept temporary perceived failure—what she calls the necessary “ugly phase” of a painting that lasts longer as the complexity of the project increases. Gupta reflects on how last year, Qian similarly took risks by performing slam poetry on Stevenson’s Spoken Word Team for the first time, passing the auditions as a first-time performer as a junior.

“Alina’s a very collaborative and forward-thinking person, she’s never afraid to go and try something outrageous, and never hesitant to ask questions,” Gupta said.

At this point, Qian and I have spoken for nearly forty minutes, and she’s back home, showing me her canvases of completed works through FaceTime. It’s dizzying: an array of colors spinning around my phone screen as Qian excitedly tells the story behind each of them. Despite all her future career plans as a senior in high school, she says, her end goal has always been art.

“I’ve always imagined that once I retire, I will be an old woman on a nice beach somewhere just painting,” Qian said. “Painting has always been my number-one true love, and all the career stuff in between is just so that I’m able to do art. I love everything that I do, but art is where I started; it’s going to be where I end.”