Teen visual artist Arantza Peña Popo from DeKalb, Georgia, was declared as winner of the annual Doodle for Google competition. She bested over 200,000 submissions from school-age artists.
"When I grow up, I hope ..." was this year's theme for the Doodle for Google competition. Google recognized Popo's work by running the winning Google Doodle for a day on Aug. 13.
Popo will receive a $30,000 college scholarship, while her school will get a $50,000 technology package. Her prize also includes a trip to Google's headquarters in California.
She graduated valedictorian from the Arabia Mountain High School, and she plans to attend the University of Southern California.
Inspired By Her Mother
Popo titled her artwork "Once You Get It, Give It Back," with her mom as her main inspiration. The art piece is mainly an expression of her appreciation for her mom. She also hopes to help her mother travel and do other things she was never able to do.
"When I grow up, I hope to care for my mom as much as she cared for me my entire life. In my doodle, there is a framed picture of my mother carrying me as a baby — a real picture in my house — and below the picture is me, caring for her when she’s older in the future,” Popo wrote in the explanation of her Google Doodle, which she conceptualized on the actual day of the deadline.
Popo started drawing when she was three years old, and her mom describes her as a someone who "lights up any room she is in." The teen intends to teach younger students art skills through free after-school programs and enrichment camps. She also wants to paint murals to help enhance disadvantaged neighborhoods and communities.
Popo was born in Colombia and came to the United States as a young child. Her artworks often captured the images of the immigrant experience. One of her other artworks — a charcoal piece that shows the cultural portrait of facial adornment from different cultures, won the grand prize for the 2018 Congressional Arts Competition. Her artwork was displayed for a year at the U.S. Capitol.
Google Doodle Throughout The Years
Google Doodles are enhancements to the Google logo to celebrate notable holidays, anniversaries, events, and the lives of famous artists, pioneers, and scientists.
The concept of the Google Doodle first originated in 1998, when Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin tinkered with the corporate logo to indicate their attendance at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert.
In 2000, then Google intern Dennis Hwang was asked by Page and Brin to create a Doodle to commemorate Bastille Day. The doodle was so well received by users it made Hwang Google's first chief doodler. Since then, Doodles started appearing regularly on the Google homepage.
The Google Doodle team has created over 2,000 doodles for Goggle's homepages around the world.
