My all-time favorite piece of art would be the Avatar (2009) movie directed by James Cameron. I never considered movies to be forms of art until I took my first animation class in the 9th grade. I began to understand how much creativity, time, effort, and skill went into movie making. Avatar uses a variety of different filming tactics like computer animation, CGI, special effects, movement tracking, and other more generic practices like storytelling, composition, photography, sound design, and lighting. When I first saw this piece of art, I was absolutely in awe. The beautiful colors dancing in pixels on the screen and the sound of nature made me feel like I was there on Pandora, part of the Na'vi. Watching all the different creatures interact with each other and move as realistically as the people is what made me fall in love with animation. To take a fictional creature like their (dragon-like) ikran and to make them fly, with their wings curving around winds as they push higher into the sky. The attention to detail in this movie made me want to keep watching it over and over again, noticing something new each time. By the time I finish watching, my eyes were dry from how little I blinked, afraid I would miss a glimpse. That was when knew I wanted to pursue computer animation, even as I enter my fourth year at an animation university, I still watch Avatar and it inspires me to remember what I am working for. To work with other people like me on a film like Avatar and inspire its viewers to discover what they love. Avatar has been my favorite piece of art for many years and will continue to be as it inspired me to discover my passion.

If I was given $1,000 right now, I would immediately put it into my bank account to either start making interest or to help me pay future tuition costs. With the cost of living increasing, it is becoming more and more difficult to set aside money for college expenses, which are also rising. The goal of college is to help developing students reach their dream job and to help them make lifelong connections with new friends and professors. However, when the cost of college starts to become more important than learning or focusing on one's mental, social, and physical state, it is no longer the proper college experience. Students do not have the opportunity to make college memories by staying out late with friends or making mistakes and learning from them or trying to figure out what it means to be an adult. Instead, they are taking the minimum amount of classes and spending every second they have working to earn money to pay for said classes. They are turning in mediocre assignments because they did not have the time to pour their heart and soul into them since they were working for money instead. Helping students pay for their college gives them the time to make these wonderful memories that will stay with them for the rest of their life. $1,000 is $1,000 less than what I, as a student, would have to make up for, giving me more time to learn and do what I love.

This wooden sculpture, named Chestnut, was made from 2 recycled wooden chairs and has traveled 300 miles with me to be shown to the people of my hometown, Hanover PA. She was made with the sole purpose of reusing old, wooden chairs that would have wound up in the trash. This was the only goal given to us, the students of the Sculpture 1 class at Edinboro University. To find broken or unusable wooden furniture, completely take it apart, and reassemble it to make a piece of art. Many of my classmates used either a wooden chair already found by the professor or took a wooden chair from their home to make a sculpture. My home is a 5.5-hour drive from the college so I had to get a little more creative. I found 2 identical wooden chairs that had an oval back and broken basket-like seats. I decided to challenge myself to not only use both chairs but to use every single piece of each chair. This meant every strand of the basket seats I unwove and every wooden chip that fell off while dismantling them I would use in the sculpture. I felt the need to work in this way because I would watch as other students were taking apart their chairs, making a mess of wood chunks on the floor. They would then sweep up these chips and throw them in the trash. I thought this completely defeated the purpose of using these unwanted chairs. The world is producing far too much trash with landfills reaching their limits. I figured the least I can do is throw away as little trash as possible during this project to prove that a beautiful piece of art can be made from anything. However, this was also only my second time working with wood, the first being in high school. It also required lots of preliminary sketches, measuring, and planning. I believe it is fair to say that I put more time into this project than most to prove that art can be made from garbage. I spent almost every night in the studio working on my horse and I am very proud of how she turned out. I used every single piece and throughout this half-a-semester project, the only things I threw away were the rusted nails and sawdust generated from the machines. I hope my final piece can be inspirational to other artists to help decrease the amount of trash or repurpose items that are no longer wanted. It certainly helped me believe in repurposing unwanted items to turn them into something beautiful for all to enjoy.