2025 SCHOLARSHIP ESSAY Yarn bomb and its impact and how it has inspired me to do more for my community For as long as I’ve been able to hold a pencil, I’ve had an ever-looming calling to create art. It has been my lifelong goal and dream to create something that will outlive me and create a genuine, positive impact on the world around me. Forever intangible and often directionless, it took me many years of experimenting with any and all mediums I could get my hands on before I truly felt as though I struck a chord within myself. After six years of vending at art and creative markets across the Dallas/Fort Worth, TX area and noticing an aching lack of accessible resources for the creatives around me, I began to search for solutions. Years of seeing the same artists vending at the same venues all desperately grasping for a leg up in their career only to be blocked by high paywalls and carefully crafted exclusivity from what seemed like every tangible opportunity led me to both hold this community extremely close, and fear that I would most likely meet the same roadblocks in my career. Museums, galleries, publications and nearly any artistic space open to the public often carries extremely high application fees as well as strict guidelines and requirements in order to get your work seen and participate in these much needed events. As the demands and expectations of this career path continue to rise, forming a genuine and sustainable career in art grows increasingly unattainable, especially to those who cannot afford to throw out cash for these applications or create work that is outside of the constrictive standards these opportunities have placed before them. In January 2022 while teaching myself Adobe InDesign, YarnBomb Zine was created. It housed 30 artists with only 30 copies printed, all given to my friends. Despite my novice design skills eating away at the paper, seeing the artists delighted to have their work in a print publication as well as receiving personal thank-you’s for creating a fun and free way for artists to get their work out to a broader public audience IMMEDIATELY struck something within me. I have been extremely infatuated with graphic communication and visual storytelling ever since. YarnBomb Zine is an art-collective magazine open to creatives of any and all mediums. It is entirely submissions based and prides itself on being completely free to contribute to and accepts every applicant, regardless of experience or craftsmanship abilities. The goal of this project is to aid in uplifting small and underrepresented artists, musicians and small businesses by providing a free opportunity to get their work published and exposed to a broader audience, as well as put a publication on their creative resumes. In August of 2025, the seventh issue of YarnBomb Zine was released, housing over 175 artists and has been donated to over 80 libraries across the globe, including over 30 college resource libraries. Seeing the impact of the community built from YarnBomb and experiencing first-hand the importance of specialized/focused communities, I aim to build my career around creating accessible platforms and resource-sharing opportunities to aid in uplifting the small and/or underrepresented creatives around me. Everything I create is made with the intention of either bettering the lives of young artists or learning/experimenting with new ways to do so. To see more about YarnBomb Zine, feel free to check out the website: yarnbombzine.com