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East Islip High School senior AP art student Naomy Mukai was recently selected for the 27th annual “Long Island’s Best: Young Artists at the Heckscher Museum” curated art show. She plans to attend SUNY Purchase’s Interdisciplinary Arts program this fall.

This year, 553 Long Island students applied and only 91 of them were curated into the Heckscher show. Mukai’s piece, “My Repressed Heart,“ is hanging on the museum wall alongside some of the Long Island’s finest student-artists, and the show will be on view until June. Mukai, her family and friends, and her teacher Dan Figliozzi visited the show for a special preview day on April 29, celebrating Mukai’s accomplishments for the year and showering her in flowers and love. 

“My Repressed Heart” is a self-portrait, done in acrylic paint and embroidery thread. In the work, Mukai is suspended inside of an iceberg. She places herself below the water level to showcase the unconscious mind and comment on Freud’s Iceberg Theory. With the help of teachers Elizabeth Sullivan Gibbons and Amarilis Singh, Mukai learned several embroidery sewing techniques. These are showcased in her embroidered heart, an element of the piece that is attached to the acrylic painting. The arrangement of the elements in the piece showcase Mukai’s ideas relating to vulnerability, repressed emotions, and coming to terms with experiences from her past. 

“Through visual art, I have been committed to comprehending more of my mind and body’s limitations. as well as the boundaries I choose to place in social interactions,” Mukai said. “I can only hope that support for the visual arts continues to grow, as none of this would have been possible without the support that I have received in the art department for the past four years. I recommend going to see this show, and continuing to spread the kindness and support we all need.”

“I am endlessly proud of Naomy for this accomplishment,” Figliozzi said. “This show is fantastic, and I am excited she’s a part of it. She has made some amazing work this year, showcasing her level of commitment to the arts, her vulnerability and her ability to push herself, take risks and enact an unbounded art making practice that goes well beyond her peers.” 

“Naomy Mukai is an exceptional artist and young woman,” teacher Heather Toomey said. “It has been a pleasure teaching her as a sophomore and watching her grow.  She has won many awards and deserves all the recognition for being in this show, because she is most definitely one of Long Island’s best artists. I am so proud that she will be attending the art school that I also attended, SUNY Purchase, School of Art & Design. Congratulations Naomy, you have a wonderful future ahead of you and we will deeply miss you in the East Islip High School Art Department.”

Date Added: 5/12/2023