December's ArtStar winner Xin (Lucy) Liu is a multitalented artist whose ceramics and jewelry design is turning heads at Lawrence High School. Liu fashioned a necklace, glazing the piece with a torch, on Wednesday at LHS.

Xin Liu thinks the right and left hemispheres of her brain get along just fine.

She’s interested in biological sciences and thinks she might pursue a career in microbiology. At the same time, she is an active artist, creating ceramics and metal jewelry.

“Her style is very much based on nature – sort of abstractions of nature, things like birds and fish and flowers and plants,” says Deena Amont, art teacher at Lawrence High School. “She’s really kind of focusing in that area.”

Liu, a senior at LHS, has received the ArtStar award for the month of December.

She started taking art classes in junior high. She liked drawing OK but really found her stride when she started making 3D art.

“I always like ceramics and jewelry a lot more than drawing because drawing is so 2D,” says Liu, who goes by the name “Lucy” in school. “All you have is a pencil and a paper, and the only thing you can do is imagine it and draw it. But with 3D art, you can bend it and form it with your hands, especially with ceramics. You can actually form the shape of the piece.”

Most of Liu’s art is done at LHS, though she does draw some on her own.

Her jewelry pieces, mostly pendants but a few bracelets and earrings, are typically made of silver or enamel, using various combinations, shapes and techniques.

Liu says she doesn’t take the time to make sure her pieces adhere to a particular style.

“I guess you can say I don’t really have a ‘style,'” she says. “I get really impatient very easily with my piece. So if I actually write it down and draw it out, halfway there I give up on it because it doesn’t go the way I want it. I usually change and make something new.”

Liu, 17, says she often draws on her interest in science to make her art.

“I’m always looking at drawing books and at plants and animals,” she says. “With their shapes, everything’s curvy. Nothing’s rigid.”

Liu says she often gives her works away to friends. Her pieces also have been featured in shows at the Lawrence Arts Center and Lawrence Public Library.

When she’s not working on art or in the classroom, Liu works at her parents’ Chinese restaurant, is on the LHS track and tennis teams, and is a member of the National Honor Society, Key Club and Scholar’s Bowl. She also has a 3.9 GPA and currently is enrolled in six advanced-placement classes.

“She’s an incredibly hard worker,” Amont says. “She’s incredibly productive. She just has this internal drive that just forces her to be creative and to apply that creativity.”

Amont says she can see connections between Liu’s creative side and her analytical side.

“She’s really able to transfer her learning to art, because basically creating a jewelry or ceramic piece is solving an art and design problem,” Amont says. “So she’s really able to apply those problem-solving skills in other areas of her life, and I think that’s one of the many things that makes her successful.”

Liu says she hasn’t decided what career path to follow. In thinking about it, she contrasts the impacts of painter Michelangelo with science pioneer Galileo.

She’s leaning toward attending the University of Washington and majoring in some sort of science field.

“I think I’m better at the art and writing and English section than I am the math and science section,” she says. “But the thing is I really want to have a career that’s fulfilling, and one that is actually beneficial to other people. I think art is really nice, but there’s only so much you can do with gazing at a painting.”

Either way, she expects to continue her artwork.

“I think I’ll probably be doing art the rest of my life,” she says. “If it’s not as a career path, it’ll be more of a side thing.”