Ben Seguin: Wins Best in Drawing ArtsEngine ScienceNews

First-year Stamps student Benjamin Seguin (BFA ​‘25) has won Best In Drawing in the 2022 ArtsEngine Science as Art Competition award. Science and Art competition, which features student artwork inspired by and demonstrating a scientific principle, concept, idea, process, and/​or structure, is a partnership between Arts at Michigan and ArtsEngine. The 2022 exhibition was on display at the Hatcher Graduate Library from February 14 – 25, 2022, and can be viewed online here.

A juried panel selected Ben’s work, titled Leukemia, as Best in Drawing using criteria based on both scientific and artistic considerations. His statement accompanying the drawing reads,

Representation of the cancerous cells that took over my bone marrow and infiltrated my body. When I was diagnosed with leukemia on September 23, 2021, merely weeks into my freshman year at Stamps, I struggled with looking at myself knowing these cells were invading my body and taking over. This picture represents what I saw when I looked at myself in the mirror after my first chemotherapy was administered and after I had received blood transfusions. The healthy blood and the medication were fighting, pushing back the cancerous cells that had previously brought me to the brink of death. I am able to regain my body, but only by introducing the chemicals of chemotherapy into my body. The addition of these chemicals saves me, but still keeps me from being fully whole as myself and myself alone. And so, the battle to overcome the effects of these medications wages on as I seek to return my body to myself so that I can once again recognize myself as who I am and who I was intended to be.