Hope, heritage and acceptance inspired the artistic works of Bishop Stang students Marina Franzese and Savannah Morris as they created their award-winning projects for the Martin Luther King Jr. Creative Expression Contest of New Bedford. 

The freshman and sophomore artists are being recognized for their artistic achievement with Morris winning third place and Franzese winning second place.

Morris’s art piece was carefully constructed and arranged with melted multicolor beads forming the shape of a disinfectant can that reads, “Divide Be Gone.” Hearts are layered onto the project, symbolizing a bridge to eliminate division.

“As a Brazilian/Cape Verdean student, I am proud to submit my artwork to honor Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy of unity and hope,” said Morris. This is Morris’s second time placing in the contest, as she won third place in the sixth grade for an essay she submitted.

Franzese achieved her second place win with a poem titled, “A Dream of Many Minds,” that was inspired by her time volunteering in the special needs classroom at Quinn Elementary School and participating in the Unified Sports Program. 

Her work with neurodivergent students moved her to write about how we should allow others to share their “light” without judgment. Franzese’s full poem is featured below.

“A Dream of Many Minds”

”I have a dream,” he once  he once proclaimed / A world where no one is shamed or blamed / Where every mind can freely roam / And every person finds a home / Yet here we stand, so quick to judge / We nudge the different, hold a grudge / We say they’re strange, we say they’re lost / Forgetting freedom at a great cost / “Injustice anywhere is a threat to all” / So why do we build such towering walls? / We push aside those who don’t blend / And fail to see where hearts could mend / The child who speaks through silent ways / Whose eyes could tell a thousand plays / The girl who spins to her own tune / A world of stars beneath the moon / “Darkness cannot drive out dark” / Yet still we smother every spark / We force them into shadowed space / And miss the light within their grace / For the minds that flutter free / The ones who see what we can’t see / Whose thoughts are oceans, wild and deep / Whose secrets dance while others sleep / “We may have come from different ships, / but we’re in the same boat now” he often quipped / So why not let each spirit sail, on winds where differences reign / For what is normal but a chain, a way to crush, a way to stain? / We ask them to conform, be still / We clip their wings, deny their will / To the boy who flaps his hands in glee / Who laughs at things we cannot see / He hums along to calm his fears / And when he’s scared he plugs his ears / So, “Let us not drink from cups of hate” / But rather let our hearts vibrate / With love for those who don’t align / Who paint outside our rigid lines / Let us sing for every soul / For every mind that makes us whole / For who decides what’s right or wrong? / Whose drum decides the marching song? / “The time is right to do what’s right” / To lift them up, to share their light / To change the world, to shift our gaze / And let inclusion blaze new ways