Environmental Art Challenge Champions 2023
Every year, the Disneyland Resort hosts a competition for its Cast Members challenging them to create art with trash and recycled materials from their work area. For 2023, the theme was Disney 100 and they asked Cast Members to create something to pay tribute to 100 years of The Walt Disney Company. Alongside my dear friend and co-worker Katherine Taylor, we created this piece titled “100 Years of Stories,” and were voted the Top Project of 2023 by our fellow Cast Members and Guests!
The Top 10 Projects chosen by Cast Members were displayed in Disney California Adventure and then voted on by guests. We are so honored to receive this award. We have wanted to participate in this challenge for years. Environmental Sustainability is extremely important to both of us; we always do our best to recycle, reuse, and re-purpose things that would otherwise be trash. We had so much fun creating something so special to us and it fills us with so much joy to know how many people also loved our project and got to enjoy it.
View more photos and our project description below!
Project Description
The Walt Disney Company was founded in 1923, and "was all started by a mouse," and the beauty of hand-drawn animation. Our project, and our role as sketch artists in the resort, keep the legacy of hand-drawn animation alive. To celebrate the 100th anniversary, we're drawing inspiration from the roots of the company's origin and how the sketch artist program continues to immerse guests in stories every day by bringing so many beloved Disney characters to life through our artwork.
Our project pays homage to where it all began. We built a replica of an animation desk with hand-painted prop books, a pencil sharpener, a brush, a lamp, a glow-in-the-dark animation wheel, and 28 hand-drawn animation sketches of Mickey Mouse flying off the desk to illustrate an idealized and fantastical day in the life of a Disney animator.
As sketch artists, we use countless colored pencils to draw character sketches for our guests. When a pencil gets too small or brittle, it is no longer usable. Instead of throwing them out, we reimagined them as something new. Over the past year, we have been saving old pencils and collecting additional recycled supplies to construct our desk. We used old cardboard, scrap paper, a damaged piece of plexiglass for the animation wheel, paper clips, broken figurines, recycled cans, and exactly 1,923 colored pencil nubs (the perfect number to celebrate 100 years of Disney!)
Thank You!
Thank you to everyone who supported, encouraged, and voted for. us during the challenge! Creating this project and winning with Katie is one of my proudest achievements. We both care about the environment and our impact on the planet so deeply and it was such an honor to get creative and use art to create something new from what would otherwise be trash.
To read more about our project and see our fellow Top 10 creations, use the link below to read the official Disney Blog post!