About · 关于
Emily Zhang.
张子艾
Artist and student. Ink in one hand, a microphone in the other. Drawings about the quiet, made by someone who lives in words.
Artist and student. Ink in one hand, a microphone in the other. Drawings about the quiet, made by someone who lives in words.
Iam investigating my struggle and journey to fall asleep through a chickadee avatar: how consistent disruptions cause aversion to sleep instead of an anticipation for rest, and how the journey navigates through these disruptors before finding an eventual resolution.
The chickadee is small, easily startled, easily lifted. Across fifteen plates the bird drifts from a restless plane of marks into an immersion of warm geometry. The night isn't conquered so much as accepted. The medium shifts with the mood: ink, graphite, paint pen, watercolor; the chickadee stays.
我以一只山雀为化身，记录入睡的挣扎与旅程：那些反复出现的干扰如何让人对睡眠从期待变为抗拒，又如何在层层阻碍中走向最终的安宁。在十五幅画中，小鸟从局促的线条走向温暖几何的怀抱，夜晚不是被征服，而是被接纳。
Emily was born in Houston and spent about ten years between Granger, Indiana and the University of Notre Dame campus before moving back to Texas in 2022 for high school. She graduated from Flower Mound High School (where the chickadees of the Sustained Investigation were drawn) in 2026, and this fall she begins at the University of Texas at Austin's Moody College of Communication, studying public relations. She works in ink, graphite, paint pen, and watercolor, and has been collecting Scholastic Gold and Silver Keys in both art and writing every year since 2023.
The other half of her practice is speaking. She has competed in speech and debate since seventh grade, at the district, state, and national level: qualifying for the National Speech & Debate Tournament and the Extemporaneous Tournament of Champions, ranking eleventh among speakers in Texas, and placing fifteenth in the nation in impromptu speaking. Since 2024 she has also been the sole instructor of a weekly extemporaneous-speaking class for an online debate academy, where she's now taught more than forty middle-schoolers across the country, writing the curriculum, the slides, and the homework herself.
Closer to home, she chairs the Social Committee of her school's Senior Engagement Council, organizing intergenerational programs at the Flower Mound Senior Center, and tutors K–12 math with Intellichoice, a Dallas nonprofit.
The drawings, then, come from someone who lives in language all day. The chickadee (small, easily startled, easily lifted) is mostly silent. That contrast is part of the point.
张子艾出生于德州休斯顿，童年的十年大多在印第安纳州 Granger 与圣母大学（Notre Dame）校园度过，2022 年才回到德州升读高中。她于 2026 年从 Flower Mound 高中毕业，那里也是《关于失眠的涂鸦》中那些山雀被一笔笔画出的地方。今年秋天，她将进入德州大学奥斯汀分校 Moody 传播学院，攻读公共关系专业。她以墨水、石墨、丙烯麦克笔和水彩作画。自 2023 年起，她每年都在 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards 的艺术与写作两个门类中获得金奖或银奖。
她的创作另一半是言说。她自七年级起便投身演讲与辩论，征战于地区、州与全国各级赛事。她曾入围全国演讲与辩论锦标赛和即兴演讲冠军锦标赛，在全德州演讲选手中排名第十一，并在全美即兴评论项目中位居第十五。2024 年起，她在一所线上演讲与辩论学院开设并独自讲授每周一次的即兴演讲课程，课程大纲、讲义和作业都由她亲自编写。至今，她已为全美四十余名初中生上过课。