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Those who’ve driven around Champaign-Urbana recently no doubt have seen buses and billboards bearing an image of two herons huddled together by the water. The watercolor, painted by Zoya Wu, is the signature image selected for the upcoming Boneyard Arts Festival.
The piece, titled “Devotion,” came out of a transitional period in Wu’s life. She had just moved back to her hometown of Urbana after living in Minneapolis for more than a decade. While she made the decision willingly, it was still wrenching to leave the life she had built there, she said.
The Urbana High School and Parkland College graduate had previously moved to Minnesota to get her bachelor of arts degree in illustration from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and then stayed on, working as a freelance artist.
She enjoyed the amenities and the vibrant art community in the bigger city, but after the murder of George Floyd and the turbulence that followed, she began to miss her family and the quieter, slower pace of life in her hometown, she said. This yearning eventually led her to make the difficult decision to uproot her life and move back.
When she painted “Devotion,” it was a deeply personal piece, she said. Submitting it for consideration to be the signature image of the 2026 Boneyard Arts Festival was not on her mind. However, the folks at 40 North, the local arts council in Champaign County, encouraged her to enter, and at the last minute, she did so.
Imagine her surprise when she received the phone call telling her she had won. Wu was overjoyed and grateful.
“It’s very validating,” said Wu. “Just having people that I admire call me up and congratulate me is really big.”
The artwork was chosen from more than 80 submissions, said Kelly White, director of 40 North.
“With Zoya’s piece, the jury was immediately impressed with the technical mastery of watercolor, translucent and delicate in all the right ways,” said White. “But what truly set this piece apart was not only its beauty, but the narrative. There is a sense of shared resilience and transition. Feelings that resonate deeply right now.
“The jury felt that this piece captures the feeling of a springtime celebration of the arts devoted to imagination, connection, and the transformative power of art,” White added. “It reflects the resilience of the arts — adapting, evolving, and finding beauty in unpredictability. It’s a story of persistence and creativity. As Zoya has on her website next to this piece: ‘We will make it through this storm together.’”
A lifelong fascination
Ever since Wu was a child, she’s been interested in art, she said.
Even as a toddler, a pen and paper could keep Wu occupied for long stretches of time, according to her mom.
Wu credits the support of her family and mentors along the way for helping her achieve her dream of becoming an artist. From her high school art teacher, Sarah Cardiff, to Joan Stolz at Parkland College, not to mention some of her professors at MCAD, she’s grateful for their mentorship and their inspiration.
“Having a mentor is always helpful,” she said. “It’s definitely one of the easiest ways to improve.”
Earlier in her career, Wu’s art was centered on people, but over time, that’s shifted. Now, for a variety of reasons, she focuses more on animals.
“When you draw people,” she said, “the artwork becomes so much about, in my opinion, that person. (It) becomes less about a symbol of something.”
But if she substitutes an animal to help illustrate a certain problem or emotion, she said it’s “easier to delve into the deeper meaning.” The question then becomes, “How can you describe that (problem) in an image that is of the natural world? I find that problem a little bit more interesting.”
This philosophy comes through in her winning image as well.
“Devotion was kind of me wrestling with the idea that I was scared of the future; of how everything seemed so unknowable where I was,” said Wu.
While she wanted to move back, it was still a difficult emotional transition, she said, because the people and the places were different from when she moved away 13 years ago.
“But the core of it was that the relationships and experiences, and the dreams that I’d had before, they were still there,” she said, “and they were still a guiding light. In times of uncertainty, you can hold onto that feeling.”
“Holding onto community and relationships through an uncertain future is kind of what the theme was,” she added.
That sense of hope and devotion is what Wu wanted to evoke.
“I think that when you’re facing an uncertain time, like a dark storm, something you can’t even see, the only thing you can really do is hope,” she said. “If you just give up and succumb, you’re gonna just sink right into the storm. It’s that holding on.”
She points to the herons, one of which is holding a magnolia branch, which Wu said symbolizes devotion.
“I think it’s just very powerful to hold onto hope despite scary dark times,” she said.
Why, one might wonder, did she choose herons as the subject of the painting? Wu had two reasons: One is that she finds herons’ nesting behavior fascinating. The second, more personal reason, is that they are a reminder of a joyful time in her life when she regularly drove by a lake frequented by herons.
Current inspiration
Wu, whose preferred mediums are watercolor and gouache, is currently working on “problem and solution” paintings, she said.
In each pair of paintings, she plans to depict how she feels about a particular issue in one and her thoughts on a potential solution in the other. Information dissemination is her current inspiration.
“I feel as though I get most of my information from an algorithm, and I’m questioning how that is really coloring my perception of reality, and how that is turning me into someone that maybe is a useful tool for someone else,” she said.
This has led her to contemplate how she can “reclaim being a human” in the face of this algorithm.
Wu’s artwork will be on display during the Boneyard Arts Festival, April 10-12, at International Galleries, 118 Lincoln Square, Urbana, as well as at Core Sample, 115 W. Main St., Urbana.
For details about all the artists and venues featured in this year’s festival, visit boneyardartsfestival.org/.
