About the Founder
Meet Mia Shrank.
I'm a junior at Watchung Hills Regional High School in Warren, New Jersey. I've been making art for as long as I can remember. Over the past few years, I've had the chance to study it seriously, training in Barcelona, Spain and Florence, Italy.
I grew up half Korean and half white, with a Korean immigrant mom and an Eastern European dad. For a long time I felt like I was floating between both sides without really belonging to either. That feeling of existing in between, of blending in without quite standing out, and standing out when you just want to blend in, is something a lot of kids like me know well.
Art has always been how I work through it. I can take something I can't really explain and put it on a page where it makes sense.
Blend In Stand Out came out of that. I wanted to build something that didn't exist for me when I was younger: a real platform where multicultural students could share their experience through art and be genuinely celebrated for it. Not as a diversity checkbox. As artists.
I hope you'll submit, share, and help make this what it can be.
— Mia
Background
Art, identity, and a lot of miles.
🇪🇸 Barcelona, Spain
Studied painting and contemporary art practice in Barcelona, a city known for its boundary-pushing creative energy and deep artistic tradition.
🇮🇹 Florence, Italy
Trained in Florence, one of the great art capitals of the world, studying classical techniques and developing a personal visual language.
🎨 Watchung Hills, NJ
Junior at Watchung Hills Regional High School in Warren, NJ, where this whole project started as a way to turn a personal experience into something bigger.
Selected Works
Mia's Art
A selection of pieces by the founder, the same artistic voice behind Blend In Stand Out.