I never had any dedicated art education during my middle school or high school years. The best way to describe younger me would be to call him a doodler. I loved drawing and sketching during classes making small drawings of cars in the margins of pages or drawing scenery from the Lord of the Rings films for friends. The person who has pushed me the most outside of my recently gained peers was my father. I've always enjoyed cars inside and out and this love has led me towards automotive design. My father grew up on a farm and loves working with his hands. He would ask me to help him in the garage whenever he worked on the roughed up cars he bought to avoid paying someone else to do it or buy a new car. We had a rough relationship for a long time, however we grew closer as we bonded over these marvelous machines of refined style and technology. He initially wanted me to go into trades to be a mechanic or to weld, but after hearing about how I wanted to design cars he subtly supports me and has supported me for much of this journey. I believe the reason I desire to be an automotive designer stems from a love for the arts and a love for my dad. I think he views the career path I've chosen in a similar light as well. He's been there to keep my head level when I'm staring at the stars. In my family, the arts aren't very highly regarded as most of my family members see art as an escape from reality. I grew up with a similar outlook as teachers pushed me away from my drawings and toward books and papers. My perception, however, has changed and I realize now that art is not an escape, but an addition. This newly gained sight directed me towards design as a career. So many people get caught up with a gap between form and function. When function has no form it becomes inhuman. When form has no function it becomes meaningless, and inhuman. My dad and I have similar understandings of art and design, though he shows it most when he talks about cars. Perhaps it brings me a bit too much joy whenever we talk about automotive styling and he says, "It's just a pretty car. I can't tell you why, but I think it looks good." From that point on he goes from a tired man into a farm kid watching car go by sporting fancy lines and flashy lights.

I first want to say thank you for providing this scholarship with a focus towards the arts as I haven't seen many in my time at university. We live in a time of continuous input from all over the world with different problems, beliefs, desires, and outlooks. Every aspect of this information may be expressed through various art forms. As an industrial designer I am tackling each of these aspects with problem-solving design that not only reduce the difficulty of tasks, but also fit within the culture. The flexibility of art in design to not only add to a solution, but also to speak to the personality, character, and culture of users. Similar to fine arts, design has the ability and often the responsibility of representing the surrounding culture. John Ruskin, a 19th century architect and journalist, believed a building should represent and elevate the functions the building contains. I believe, with design, I can help others celebrate their cultures and character through outward expression of functional art. A recent project of mine, though also a learning experience for technical skills, aimed towards the celebration of the French men's basketball team's success during the 2024 summer Olympics where they achieved second place. I designed a basketball shoe with the goal of being distinctly French and enabling endurance within competition. This goal drove me towards French shoe brands who clearly celebrated French heritage, which led me to Palladium. Palladium crafted boots for the French military in World War 1 and holds proudly to values of culture, durability, and environmental awareness. Thank you for your time!

I like this question as it really digs deep into what truth is and what are the origins of truth. The way I want to define truth for this essay is a piece of information that has been verified by authority and by experience. To explain this using the Bible there exists the fact that the bible is true in what it says which is a claim made by God, the authority, and when the earth is created in Genesis the truth is found in that a being of authority verifies its truth, God, and there is the experience of that being done which also comes from God. Now to apply this to the personal truth people claim there exists an authority claiming its truth and there are experiences that verify the truth. The biggest difference in these two types of truth is that God's truth is objective while a person's truth is subjective. To back this point I would invite us to look at Job. Within Job we are given many perspectives of truth; We are given God's truth in the scenes within his court, Job's truth, and the truths of Job's associates. With the perspective we are given from God we see that Job's suffering comes from trials that God has permitted Satan to do to try and get Job to curse God. With Job's perspective we see awful experiences happening to him. Through Job's acquaintances we see condemnation and pleading for Job to repent to God because the truth they know is that the unjust shall be punished. Throughout the entire book Job, with the truth he has experienced, calls to God that he would not be put through these trials. Yet, Job does not have the full truth of the situation that God has and therefore his truth is subject to his experience and knowledge. At the closing chapters to the book of Job, God reveals that he knows the whole truth of all that goes on and that this truth is beyond Job's ability to understand. In Isaiah 55:9 the Lord declares, "for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." There is only one response that the subjective truth of man has when confronted by God's truth and that is humility as seen within Job 42:3b for "I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know." A false or incomplete truth carried around as "my truth" pales in comparison to the complete truth of God.

Art and design hold a special place in my heart as I have had the opportunities to build relationships through artwork that I enjoy and that I have made. Originally, I was skeptical as to whether I wanted to be an artist or designer and I chose to go into mathematics education. Thankfully, a friend of mine, for whom I had made a drawing of Minas Tirith from Lord of the Rings, saw me struggling in that major and they asked me to reconsider. I remained skeptical and yet this friend assured me multiple times and would tell me of the complements they would get on small drawings I would gift them to encourage me. Now, after being enrolled in an art and design program for a bit over a year, I have made a number of artworks and a few that I might consider being proud of. My favorite work so far is a pitcher designed after a Vietnamese pitcher I saw in a museum catalog; the work in question is a white pitcher with blue feather and flame decals with a beautiful, curved handle. I crafted my own version of the pitcher adding details to my preference and overall learning a horde of knowledge about ceramics. This piece I constructed with coils to build up the unique shape and then added slabs to add volume and shape for details. For the glaze I coated the pitcher in a red iron that oxidized and gave the piece a beautiful metallic shine with subtle hues of red. This piece is meant to be a phoenix and perhaps it holds meaning to me as art and design was a passion that I left dead in the past, yet it reignited and has brought me to people and places I didn't know I wanted to meet. Officially I have titled this piece "The Phoenix," but when I originally pieced it together the friends I made while learning art and I affectionately called it "Das Goose." I desire to work at an automotive design firm or work for an automotive company after college. I have a tremendous respect for art that calls out to the world, but I do not believe that is my place. Instead, I want to bring designs to the automotive world that aim to help others and, at the same time, bring meaning into that which I design. As a Christian, it is a right goal of mine to create with intent and purpose in reflection upon the fact that I was created in such a manner. Psalm 139:13-14.