It’s that time again! Introducing this years annual FD Day 2022 art competition “The World Through My Eyes, The Mitzvah Year”.

Since 2009, the Dysautonomia Center has hosted an annual art competition called “The World Through My Eyes” to set the challenge for people with familial dysautonomia to tell the story of how it feels to live with this rare genetic disease.

This year, we are celebrating a very special anniversary of “The World Through My Eyes” annual FD art competition. It has been 13 years since it’s inception, making this the competition’s Bar and Bat Mitzvah! For that reason, this year’s theme is “The Mitzvah Year”.

The Bar & Bat Mitzvah year in the Jewish faith is deeply defining. It marks a stage of personal change, maturity, and spiritual growth in one’s life that allows a greater capacity for connecting with others or with God and doing good deeds.

This year, we are asking for artwork that displays not only what it is like to see “The World Through My Eyes” of our artists, but through the lens of the Mitzvah year, representing transformation through growth, change, connection and seeking to do good.

There was an extraordinary turn out in 2021, making it the biggest and best art show so far. It was incredibly fun for all the artists and our international audience during FD Day 2021! And the degree of talent on display was astonishing.

Please contribute again this year or join for the first time to show off your brand of creativity to the world!

The rules for this year’s competition are the same as last year. All artistic forms are accepted! We want to see or hear from you. We are calling for sketches, paintings, digital artwork, photos, videos, poems, singing, sculpture and more!

An independent panel of professional artists will determine the winners of each category, who will then be announced on FD Day 2022.

Rules

1. Participants must have familial dysautonomia.
2. Submissions must be current creations, made in 2021 – 2022.
3. All work must be original.
4. All submissions may be submitted electronically, but must be in high resolution. Grainy images hinder the judges’ ability to appreciate the art-piece.
5. Hand-drawn or painted entries can be submitted by taking 2 high-resolution photos of the artwork, one centered on the work, and one from a small distance to show scale. They can also be scanned. Please submit unaltered photos of hand-drawn or painted images.
6. For photos and digital artwork, we accept and encourage the creative use of software such as Adobe Photoshop.
7. Poetry submissions can be either handwritten then scanned, or typed. And remember that poems do not have to rhyme. All forms are accepted.
8. All submissions must be titled! This is part of the creative process and can lend meaning to the artwork!

Submissions
Send submissions no later than April 14th, 2022. Please use subject line “FD Art”
Submit to: nyudysautonomiacenter@nyulangone.org

Winners
As an added incentive and to make this a real competition we will again award the top 3 winners with a $50 dollar gift card, award certificate and ribbon, and commemorative t-shirt for displaying their achievement.

We cannot wait to see what you can do in The Mitzvah Year!