Name
Samaya Glazier

Age Group (If you are a caregiver/family member please check Caregiver/Family Member)
Children: 12 and under

Category
Drawing/Painting/Printmaking/Chalk Art

Artist Statement (include type of art, techniques & materials used, what it means to you)
Headdress - Brain of Beauty
This painting shows a woman with flowers growing out of her head and a blue jay representing inner beauty.

This piece Headdress, is both a drawing and painting combined. It contains dried flowers, a blue jay feather and pen markings as well as metallic acrylic paint.

The techniques used were, burnishing with prisma colored pencil and overlapping/ blending with metallic acrylic paint and prisma pencil.

To me, the bluejay is inner beauty, but it is also my Spirit Animal. Everywhere I go, it seems blue jays are always there. I love them and find them so beautiful and calm. I feel like they are protectors for me.

Headdress represents inner beauty and how to grow your mindset beyond what you look like or differences you may have.


Bio (include your age, tumor type and date of diagnosis)
Samaya (11.5 years old), is a young passionate artist based in Brooklyn, New York. She showed great enthusiasm and focus for art at an early age. Samaya would become immersed in her projects and always felt at home with her art. In elementary school, her work was chosen to be entered into a city-wide contest hosted by the Brooklyn Children’s Museum.

As Samaya and her work has matured, she tends to gravitate toward portraits of people and animals. While she has an uncanny ability to replicate the works of the masters by eye, she loves to create her own art which is expressive with color. Her favorite mediums are watercolor and acrylic as well as multimedia projects.

Samaya is a survivor of Craniopharyngioma, a rare pituitary brain tumor. She was just 8 years old when diagnosed (2019). She is now in recovery with lingering medical challenges but has regained 100% of her sight and her “art spirit”. Art is an incredibly healing process for her. This is her third year participating in Raymond Wood’s Art of Surviving. She has won in her age group, category and both “People’s Choice” and “Judges Choice” in the past. She is honored to participate again with so many amazing artists and survivors.

For Summer 2023, she was selected to present a live making mural as a part of DUMBO Arts District Development. She will have a massive piece of her art blocked out and she will live paint one side while the public will be invited to paint on the other side. She is excited to share her art beyond the walls of home and school.

It is Samaya’s wish to pursue a creative life in Visual Arts. While her path has not been easy, art has helped to light her way. May her work bring some hope and color into your day. She is grateful to Creatively Wild and her primary teacher Sally Novak for teaching her and instilling in her confidence and love of the craft.