He also wrote the following essay:
My artwork, entitled “Downhill Run,” is intended to commemorate the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeong Chang, Korea. I have been watching the Winter Olympics, and rooting for the United States Olympic Team. My favorite events were the downhill skiing and slalom skiing races, as well as bobsledding. I chose to build an O-scale model of a downhill ski mountain, and used rubber bands to power a ski-lift, by connecting a balsa wood rubber band powered toy plane to a series of pulleys, to power the lift.
I constructed the mountain by connecting two pieces of plywood at a 90-degree angle using L-clamps. I then stapled window screen to the plywood with a carpenter’s staple gun, and shaped the screen into the downhill ski-run and the mountain. Once this was done, I covered the entire mountain with plaster cloth and papier mache. I then decorated the mountain with O-scale trees, wood debris, and rocks. I covered the entire scene with O-scale model snow, sprinkling it on, then covering it with Windex (so the glue will penetrate and hold) and then spraying glue on. I finished decorating the scene with a finish line, a 2018 Winter Olympics sign, a family of O-scale deer, and several O-scale skiers and other winter people.
I then brought rubber bands into the artwork as a means of powering a ski lift to carry an O-scale skier to the top of the downhill run. I took the fuselage of a rubber band powered balsa wood toy airplane, and attached it to the base of the project on a small section of dowel, cross-braced with another piece of balsa wood. I attached a small pulley from a set of model pulleys I bought at a local hobby shop to the end of the propeller, using strong glue. I then screwed another two pulleys, one large and one small, onto the base of the project, a few inches away. I then attached an even larger pulley to a tall dowel attached to the side of the mountain to act as the ski lift tower. I connected the small pulley attached to the propeller of the toy plane to the larger pulley attached to the base of the project. I then connected the attached smaller pulley to the large pulley on top of the larger dowel with a long piece of rubber band knotted in place. I attached a ski lift chair I made from a paper clip to the knot of the long elastic, and glued a seated O-scale skier to the ski lift chair. When the rubber band powering the plane’s propeller is wound up counterclockwise, the ski lift chair slowly descends the ski lift. When it is fully wound and released the working ski lift lifts the O-scale skier to the top of the downhill run!
People will benefit from my artwork, because it will remind them of the Winter Olympics, one of the few peaceful events that unites countries and people from all over the world. By remembering the Olympics, people will hopefully be inspired to unite peacefully in other events throughout the four-year period between the Winter Olympics.
