Mella Yang & Mandy Lin

Before she was old enough to hold a paintbrush, Mella Yang was already sprinting through the halls of her mother Mandy Lin’s art school. While many other kids and I were scribbling on their living room walls, Mella had an entire studio to explore– a studio that would later become a part-time job, creative refuge, and window into a declining trend among today’s youth: imagination. 

Since graduating from Otis College of Art & Design, Lin has been an art teacher for 28 years. For most of that time, she has run U.S. Arts & Design in Arcadia, CA– an art school providing courses on various mediums for young, aspiring artists. 

Lin’s background in game design is very prominent as she teaches young artists. She utilizes the immersive, engaging nature that is studied in designing video games to stimulate learning in unconventional ways.
“Make it fun. Make it possible. Everything is possible in a game– we can make it the same (for them) in art.” 

However, as much as they can implement incentives and game-like experiences in their teaching, it is difficult for both of them to ignore the loss of creativity spreading amongst our youth. 

Mella Yang, a rising senior at Glendora High School, recently began working at the school with her mother. She teaches children ages 4-7 weekly as well as being a swimmer on the Glendora High School varsity swim team during the school year.

Growing up with a mother running an art school had its perks for Mella and her brother. “My favorite thing to do in the studio was running up and down the halls and seeing the full classrooms… we were allowed to go behind the (front) desks, things like that.” She even recalls her brother taking advantage of his mother’s status as principal when he was in quarrels with another child. For Mella, the school provides an outlet as well as a source of consistent inspiration throughout her life to be surrounded by so much art coming from a varied range of creatives.

Yang hopes that their art school, and others like it, encourage parents to continue to provide such hands-on tools for the creative youth in ways they will not receive from other extracurriculars. “Sports don’t do it. Your IPad doesn’t do it– gaming, homework, writing essays for school doesn’t do it.” Researchers at Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman agree with her. In a study on the impact of creativity on happiness, it was found that nurturing, playful environments like the U.S. Arts & Design school are crucial as people are more likely to think divergently without fear. In particular, Tan et al. mentions that they become more “flexible in cognition.” Yang worries for future generations to lose that space for mistakes and genuine play as they become more reliant on technology to think for them. As the two have taught young children in a post-pandemic society, the two can see this clearly in the drawings and paintings her young students tend to draw, as well as the habits they have developed.

“All that my kids draw are characters and things they see in Roblox–” a popular website game amongst children under the age of thirteen- “the block figures and circular faces,” Mella laughs, half in disbelief. “It’s as if they can’t think of their own characters anymore.” 

Though she says her view may be a little biased as a naturally gifted artist from a young age, Yang is not alone in noticing what she calls a “creativity block” happening among kids today. “People are copying way more online. Reference images are everywhere now, and students copy them one-to-one, down to the details. That’s not easy either, but I used to be able to just sit down and draw.”

This phenomenon of kids needing a blueprint before they even begin is something both Mella and Mandy see in growing numbers. While the internet offers more access to visual material than ever before, and it is encouraged for those starting out in an art medium to use them, it also seems to be narrowing creative instinct. There’s less of that “what if?” energy; It’s more, “how do I recreate exactly what I saw?” In this way, they are simply imitating someone else’s art rather than making it something that only they can make. In contrast, Shea Valle, another rising senior at Glendora High School who was an artist spotlighted in our GHS Art Showcase, specifically finds a point in referenced drawings to put away the source and lean into what she feels is right. To create original art, in Valle’s words, you have to trust your intuition at some point in the process.

Researchers back this up. In the same study from UTAR, psychologists found that being creative—even in simple, everyday ways—directly improves one’s well-being. But what happens when that creativity is outsourced? “Individuals who are more satisfied with their lives are more willing to make changes to solve problems,” the researchers noted. If art becomes another task of replication, not exploration, it loses its problem-solving magic. For Mella, who has lived inside an art school since before she could talk, that magic was never hard to find.

Zoya is in the Class of 2026 at Glendora High School, and was the Assistant News Editor for the Tartan Shield during the 2024-25 school year.