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This past year, being my second-to-last year in my BFA program, things have really started to speed up, and the stakes and responsibilities that I am living up to have become higher and higher. This year I have really started to get a good idea of what life will be like beyond college, and the steps that I will have to take once I am graduated in order to make my goals become reality.
Being at the university with so many resources at hand, and support in so many ways is a blessing that I am lucky to have. It’s made things much easier, and I have felt supported by my advisors, professors, mentors, and workshop managers in order to get the things done that I need. However, this year I’ve been thinking about what will happen when I graduate, and move into a stage of my life where a lot of those things will fall on me to organize and complete. Of course, I will still have support from people who care about me, but the realism of a life without school is pretty serious. Like many students, this has not been a life I have ever had to face, ever since the first day of preschool.
So, during this year my goal has been on setting myself up for success in these coming years of my life. I have really focused on building good job references, developing a robust studio art practice, and investing in sort of “infrastructure” for the studio art business that I want to have post-grad.
Since doing studio art will not be prolific for me for a while- until I build my reputation- I have been pursuing museum research and curatorial work! As I mentioned in my 2023 review, I worked together with Dr. Platts on a research project last summer, which I am grateful to participate in once again this semester. Through my work on that, I have also landed a job for a similar research internship at the Taft Museum in the curatorial department.
To build my studio practice, I took the leap to rent out a personal studio space on the West End, with more than enough space to carry out artwork in both large scales and large quantities. I have begun to focus my painting practice on textile based mixed media using quilting techniques, and this requires a lot of planning and room. It also gives me a space for studio visits and meetings with prospective patrons and clients. This was a huge step for me, and has already been paying off more than I could have imagined. Check out my website for some images of my latest work!
In only a few words, my personal growth this year has left me feeling confident and more aligned with the person that I’d like to be. I couldn’t have done it without the network I have built at DAAP, and I am looking forward to finishing my four years out strong.
Year in Review 2024
Year in Review 2023
This year I have taken several strides forward into what I consider my professional career as an artist. I took steps like creating my portfolio website, participating and curating a group show with my peers, and taking an internship this summer with Manifest Gallery, as well as an Art History research assistant role with Dr. Chris Platts.
An experience that I'd like to highlight from this past year is the group show that I participated in in December. It was part of a class called Sophomore Research Studio where the objective was to identify a topic of interest, and do extensive research on that topic to create a body of work that responds to that topic in a sophisticated way. This class was instrumental in developing a thought process for creating art and writing about my art in a way that is both conceptually sound, as well as thorough and clear to the audience.
During this class, I went through a lot of ideas and iterations of those ideas to land on something that felt right. I had a whole semester to create this body of work, so extra time and care was put into the development which paid off. I had the chance to develop these lofty ideas that I was having about time, space, relationships, and sentimentality. Through my research I justified my thoughts using cultural trends and the context of art history. This was the most well rounded art making experience I have had, and set the foundation that I needed to create truly sophisticated and special artwork. Since then, I have felt enlivened in the process of research, and desire to know more and diversify my interests so that I can make art that is rooted in truth.
One of my biggest goals is to be able to show in galleries and museums across the country and the world. At the end of Sophomore Research Studio we curated our own show with everyone's pieces, and I got to know about how the gallery environment works on a small scale. Now that I an interning with Manifest Gallery, I am discovering this on a larger scale, and can't wait to apply what I am learning to my professional practice.
Year in Review 2022
I’ve grown a lot in this past year a lot, both through my experiences on and off campus. Before this year, I felt a lack of purpose and direction. I had a lot of support and was successful in a lot of ways, but most of the things that I was doing did not feel fulfilling in the ways that I wanted them to. Also, because of the pandemic, these important past few years of my life were a lot different than I thought they would be, and that was surprising and confusing. I felt powerless to change how I was feeling by making the changes that needed to be made; either because I was used to relying on others to make decisions for me, or I felt too unsure in my own decisions to make dramatic changes in my life.
This year, through my classes and through my deeper exploration of the world and myself, I grew to have an increased sense of independence and confidence to autonomously direct my life to the purpose that most fulfills me. Just this past year, being in the Fine Arts program at DAAP, having traveled to art museums and galleries in New York City and Nashville, and finding new job opportunities that take me out of my comfort zone, I have come into contact with so many important influences. I am so inspired by the people that I have met and the lives that they lead, which leads me to really think about the kind of person that I want to be, and reach out for goals which support that. Also, the experience of being in college for the first year and having so many more responsibilities and more control has given me the confidence to make important decisions. Overall, this year has helped me grow into a far more intentional, purposeful, and ambitious artist.