When teachers asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, my answer was always to be an educator. I admired my teachers and developed a passion for English and language arts, which helped me excel in school and sparked my interest in writing as a hobby. It wasn't until high school that this passion began to shift. I had always loved drawing in small sketchbooks, and creativity was heavily emphasized in my household. However, it wasn't until I started watching YouTube videos that taught me about concepts like line weight and color theory that I began to understand art as a skill, rather than something that simply required talent. I began to understand that to be good at art meant to practice multiple other subjects like science and math when learning measuring and proportions, or paint mixing and layering mediums. Art supplied me with new things to learn every day, and my favorite part was storytelling. As a reader and a writer, learning to create a narrative and tell a story has always been an important part of my life, but up until this point, all of my work had been strictly literary. Visual arts allowed me to tell stories through imagery, adding details and textures that caused viewers to think about my intentions without any written explanation. This was what pushed me towards the dream of teaching art instead. I find that there is an infinite amount of value in storytelling through art when considering the wide age range of the artists, along with the audiences who appreciate it. What I mean by that is that art can be created and consumed by such a wide volume of people coming from all walks of life. These stories help us relate to and understand different perspectives, which is why I would love to teach this way of thinking to younger generations. For so long, I saw art in school as an elective, most of my classmates seeing it as an easy way to get credits, however, I think that when prioritized, art can do a lot to encourage positive mental and emotional health practices. It encourages students to share their feelings and beliefs with others and teaches them how to handle giving and receiving constructive criticism with respect and civility. I feel I am most inspired by this dream of teaching because most of my work is a reflection of myself through self-portraits. My passion for teaching and art stemmed from my own experience, and with my work, I want to inspire other students to do the same. I want to see upcoming generations fight for better education for themselves, and I think art is an avenue that opens students up to community, politics, emotional well-being, and storytelling. Creativity and the ability to be imaginative need to be taught alongside rationality and critical thinking because, without them, well-rounded students are unable to thrive.

When teachers asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, my answer was always to be an educator. I admired my teachers and developed a passion for English and language arts, which helped me excel in school and sparked my interest in writing as a hobby. It wasn't until high school that this passion began to shift. I had always loved drawing in small sketchbooks, and creativity was heavily emphasized in my household. However, it wasn't until I started watching YouTube videos that taught me about concepts like line weight and color theory that I began to understand art as a skill, rather than something that simply required talent. I began to understand that to be good at art meant to practice multiple other subjects like science and math when learning measuring and proportions, or paint mixing and layering mediums. Art supplied me with new things to learn every day, and my favorite part was storytelling. As a reader and a writer, learning to create a narrative and tell a story has always been an important part of my life, but up until this point, all of my work had been strictly literary. Visual arts allowed me to tell stories through imagery, adding details and textures that caused viewers to think about my intentions without any written explanation. This was what pushed me towards the dream of teaching art instead. I find that there is an infinite amount of value in storytelling through art when considering the wide age range of the artists, along with the audiences who appreciate it. What I mean by that is that art can be created and consumed by such a wide volume of people coming from all walks of life. These stories help us relate to and understand different perspectives, which is why I would love to teach this way of thinking to younger generations. For so long, I saw art in school as an elective, most of my classmates seeing it as an easy way to get credits, however, I think that when prioritized, art can do a lot to encourage positive mental and emotional health practices. It encourages students to share their feelings and beliefs with others and teaches them how to handle giving and receiving constructive criticism with respect and civility. I feel I am most inspired by this dream of teaching because most of my work is a reflection of myself through self-portraits. My passion for teaching and art stemmed from my own experience, and with my work, I want to inspire other students to do the same. I want to see upcoming generations fight for better education for themselves, and I think art is an avenue that opens students up to community, politics, emotional well-being, and storytelling. Creativity and the ability to be imaginative need to be taught alongside rationality and critical thinking because, without them, well-rounded students are unable to thrive.

I am the youngest of 3. I am the only girl, my mother's only child, and I live an hour away from my brothers. Life was different when we were little, my mom and dad were still together, my brothers would visit on weekends, and I was happy feeling like we were a unit. But things change quickly. My brothers started staying with their mom more, my parents divorced, and it felt as if I was being torn in multiple directions all at once yet being forgotten entirely all at the same time. I soon realized how much I looked up to my brothers. When they started playing sports, I did too. When they fell in love with music, so did I. I hung on their every word and had a hunger for their attention that I could never seem to attain. They were older and they were boys, they didn’t have the time nor the want to hang out with a little kid like me. When I played basketball it seemed like I was getting attention from everyone other than my brothers. They called me a “powerhouse” and a “beast” and I couldn’t go a game without hearing “She plays just like her brother”. I took on the same number and learned to play the same game and every Friday I drove an hour to watch him dominate yet he only took time out to watch me play once. Years went by and my oldest brother got married and started a family while my other brother went to college to play football. All eyes were on them and In all their glory, I was lost in the shadows. I started to hate basketball. I hated being compared to my brothers yet never being good enough to warrant any of their time. My father would give lame excuses for why they never called while I drowned in the background. I hated them and I hated all the work I had put into trying to be like them. In every article or podcast, my brothers did, I was constantly the missing link, a side character, the forgotten child. Was it because I was a girl? Was it because I was younger? Was the distance too much? Eventually, I grew tired of trying and instead did everything I could to be the exact opposite of my brothers. I quit basketball, threw myself into my education, found a passion for art and literature, and learned that just because they were my family didn’t mean they had to be the center of my life. I made my own family out of the people who had always been there for me and who I had taken for granted longer than I should’ve. I prioritized my mental health and gave myself the attention that I had craved my entire life. I learned to make the shadow of my brothers into a home and find advantages in the fact that my brothers never knew me at all.

One of my favorite book-to-film adaptations is from the 1963 children's book, Where The Wild Things Are. From the cinematography, soundtrack, and costuming to the acting, writing, and directing I feel that the WTWTA 2009 film adaptation did a fantastic job at portraying the imaginative world shown in the book while also adding to the story conceptually by showing the less glorified sides to child fantasy storytelling and imagination. The author, Maurice Sendak, created a timeless world that told the story of a boy named Max who represented the sides of childhood that at the time, were not often expressed in the realm of children's literature. Max goes through the emotions of anger, neglect and frustration so early on in the story and it is what drives him to travel into the world of The Wild Things. The film director, Spike Jonzes, emphasizes these emotions through the pacing of the scenes. Showing how through the eyes of a child, the excitement of playing outside and feeling included can also hold the same adrenaline as feeling neglected as you tear your sisters room apart. Even though Max is going through situations that don't seem like that big of a deal, they feel larger than life which emphasizes the themes of childhood that the story is working to represent. These scenes feel dramatic and larger than life because that is how it feels to be a kid when your emotions consume you in ways you haven't come to understand yet. These childlike representations of emotions are then shown throughout The Wild Things. The shift into the imaginative world was something that was carefully thought through by Jonzes, leading him to fall in the middle of using practical effects and puppetry and digital effects to create these beasts that feel real to not only Max but the viewer as well. The Wild Things all represent the inner working of Max's mind which is also why they reflect his character so well. Max is welcomed into a community of people just like him on an emotional, intellectual and humorous level, which can at times feel fun and adventurous but also very lonely and isolating. We see how characters like Karol show similar tendencies to react with anger when it comes to not understanding or not feeling understood in the same way max reacts in the beginning of the film. It creates a situation where max is forced to react to his own behavior, choosing to lash out in the same way his mother had. this childlike understanding of discipline and parenting becomes a turning point for max's character that that not only effects how he sees his relationship with The Wild Things but also his relationships with his mother and sister. The emotional depth of this book-to-film adaptation is what makes it so special for me. As someone who read the book and watched the movie as a kid, the characters were ones I could understand and relate to and watching it now as an adult solidifies some of the strong emotions I felt growing up that I never explored or understood that caused some of my relationships to falter. I think the book and movie both do a great job at finding the line between imaginative fantasy and literary fiction that has the power to be understood emotionally even if not every situation is rational, which were concepts not valued by critics. It forgets the whimsical glory of playing pretend and instead shows the very real feelings of childhood neglect and sadness that is not often represented on the big screen.

Growing up I loved many different art forms but was taught that art was only seen as a hobby and that it was always going to be harder to make a career out of it because it was strictly based off of talent alone, which at 12 was something I had none of. I was raised in a sports family and was told for years that basketball was going to be my ticket into college. It was never something I loved outside or socializing but quickly learned that practice and repetition was always required to get the best performance on the floor. By freshman year I finally learned that this was also true it art. I started drawing everyday and posting my work on social media. I watched YouTube videos and sketchbook tours that inspired me to keep challenging myself and creating. Throughout quarantine I worked as hard as I could so that when I got back to school I could sharpen my skill work in a more focused space with other artists who took it as serious as I did. however when I got to school that was not the case. I came into my art classes with the mindset that I needed to focus more on my art because if I didn’t I couldn’t make it into college. My family had engraved the mindset that basketball was the only way so I needed to carve another path. Unfortunately it was hard to keep this focus when I was put into a class of people who were only taking art as an elective. I wanted so badly to make a career out of my work and make it to college off of my art alone. My love for basketball had completely disappeared and had been replaced for art, music, cinema. I couldn’t believe that people could see the possibilities in what art brought to the table as a field that is just as competitive and takes just as much hard work and practice as any other sport. It frustrated me as a student that my family and peers only valued the physical work I put into basketball and not the mental and emotional work it takes into crating a piece that causes another person to feel something. I believe this frustration is what drove me to work even harder, working for hours at a time, quitting basketball aster my junior year, and submitting my work into contests trying to get noticed by anyone I could. Everywhere I went I expressed my passion for art and showed people the hours of work I’ve put into my pieces and the stories they are built on. I educated my friends on the challenges that artists, writers, and performers go through in pursuit of their creative dreams and aspirations and showed that there is competitive nature in every field that requires you to work harder and practice more. Talent is only a small piece of a bigger picture and shouldn’t get more credit than the hours artist spend to get to where they are. My goal is to teach this to other people in a way that no one taught me. I want to challenge creative minds the same way we challenge our athletes. Teaching creativity and skill to young people is what inspires more youth to tell their stories and to work in more artistic fields. I believe that this will challenge students way of thinking in a way that forces them to see the world as more than just themselves, practicing emotional intelligence and teaching empathy for others around them.

My biggest influence in my artistic life has been artists like Matthew Sorgie and Camila Salinas. They were both artists that I was introduced to very early in my art journey and who inspired me to try out art to begin with. Matthew worked with vibrant animation and built his brand in high school, selling prints and stickers on his own online store. He worked in a range of mediums and used his YouTube platform to show his process through his digital and traditional art. Camila focuses her work on self portraits, creating hyper-realistic images of multiple versions of herself all sitting in a room together. I have always been impressed by her concepts and creativity and even more so by her attention to detail and ability to mix acrylic under paintings with colored pencil detailing. Matthew and Camila both showed me how valuable YouTube and Tiktok are as a source of inspiration, practice, and experience. From tutorials to sketchbook tours I was taught the value of storytelling through art and how so much of the world around me would not be what it was if not for the simple basics of traditional studio art. It became a way for me to be taught art in a way that opened my eyes to the world around me and was comfortable and affordable enough for a teen experimenting with a new hobby. However, art for me became so much more than a hobby. As I begin my college career at Minneapolis College of Art and Design I hope to major in Fine Arts and begin working towards my dream of being an art educator. I have known since I was younger that I wanted to work in the schools and with kids but it wasn't until my freshman year of high school that I discovered that art was what I really wanted to teach. I hope to provide students and future artists with an art education that I was not impacted by while I was in school. Looking back at my previous art classes I always felt very underwhelmed by the curriculum or overlooked by other extracurriculars like sports or STEM clubs. I want to bring life to the arts programs in schools and I believe that by challenging students more conceptually and really driving the connection between themselves and their work, I could really inspire students passion for art. I would also like to follow in Matthews footsteps and start selling my own prints and products. I feel it is important to not only sell your work but to sell yourself and I think that starting my own business and selling products is a way that I could really connect to not only my audience but also my community. Another goal I have as I enter college is to produce a mural in Minneapolis. there are so many ways that the artists of Minnesota give back to the Twin Cities and mural work is one thing that I long to be apart of. I think my artistic skill is different because I have versatility in working in any medium. I have experimented in almost every medium and work in a variety of styles and sizes which made commission work very popular when I started posting on social media and has helped me challenge myself in ways I was never challenged in school. I hope to find success in a career in art because I want to work for my passion and sustain myself with my art, making a name for myself and an example for future generations.

The favorite piece I've created was a collection that I called Childhood. I focused on using Crayola markers and crayons to create a more childlike tone to each image. It was 4 images that showed a monochromatic background with toys, objects, and symbols that are commonly used in young female toy marketing. This is then covered up by things that have been labeled as boy toys, masking the more feminine products. Children don’t benefit from gendered marketing. This system not only limits their range of interests but also their experiences. By labeling toys by gender instead of function, marketing companies cater to making adults comfortable while retailers are allowed to sell stereotypes. It’s the reason we see low numbers of women in STEM and men in childcare. The toys we give children shape the way they view their role in occupational society, limiting them to their gender instead of their ability. This became extremely important to me as I watched my older brother raise my nephews, in which their love for arts, literature, and drama was repeatedly ignored and instead they were influenced to focus on more masculine and physical hobbies like football and other sports. I feel that doing this teaches our kids to fear what they don't understand and holds them back from experimenting and finding their own identity. We need to allow kids to grow and play with whoever and however they want regardless of the genders certain toys are marketed for.

I grew up watching YouTube as a main source of entertainment. I connected with comedic commentary videos and was convinced that when I grew up I was going to grow my online presence and become a YouTuber. It was around 2019 when I discovered Matthew Sorgie. He had been making sketchbook tours and time-lapse videos since 2016 and he introduced me to the art side of YouTube. He works heavily in vibrant illustrations and uses interesting forms and perspectives to create whimsical pieces and lively characters. He was also extremely relatable. As an upcoming freshman in high school, I admired Matthew's work ethic and achievements as a senior. He had won awards, got high scores on his AP portfolio, and started selling his own prints. He was only 3 years older than I was and he made art seem like a career goal that could be attainable for me if I worked hard enough. Sometimes I struggled to watch his videos. I compared my art to his for a long time and our styles and experiences were so vastly different that it made me feel I would never reach his level of success. I practiced every day and no matter how hard I tried I could never match his vibrant colors and soft linework. Eventually, I had to understand that I had to find my own individual style. I was never going to find my own voice if I copied someone else so instead of focusing on Matthew’s style, I focused on his practice. He started making videos on his experience with his AP portfolio and what it was like having to make art for the college board. He shared his trial and error with starting his own website as a teenager and I followed him as he went through his college decisions and did his very first group show. Even though I was still growing in my understanding of color theory and caricature, I did adapt my process to match Matthews and started shifting my focus to learning more about acrylic painting. I transformed my old bedroom into an art room, bought myself an easel, and filled my space with supplies so that I could spend the rest of my time in quarantine learning to paint. I started to learn from other YouTube artists as well. I started learning little things like why you should start with an underpainting or how mediums change the consistency of your paints and as I branched out in the art side of YouTube I watched Matthew start meeting his YouTube icons in person for the first time. Our backgrounds and relationships with YouTube were so similar, so watching his channel grow and seeing him get recognized by people he admired made me proud as a fan. I now am in the process of my senior AP portfolio and I can't help but feel nostalgic looking back on Matthew’s videos. He hasn’t posted online for two years and I find myself longing to see how his work has evolved. I see a little bit of Matthew in all of my work. Whether it is the space I work in or the bright colors I have learned to use, I find confidence in posting my work online and have learned to connect with artists around my community through social media and in person. I hope to find success in group work the same way Matthew did and I hope to eventually see more of his work soon. I grew up watching YouTube as a main source of inspiration, growing and learning from artists like Matthew.

My name is Jadyn Spann and I have been pursuing art for the past 5 years. My practice really took off throughout quarantine but it soon carried over into my extracurricular's at school like Art Club. I was a part of Art Club all 4 years of high school and by senior year I was nominated president where I helped raise over $250 in Art Club sales. My art career played a huge part in making my high school experience so special, allowing me to be challenged in the IB Visual Arts program for 2 years which led me to work with local artists like Mark Rivard from Do Rad Things Co. and Aayah A.W from Spray Finger to make short documentaries that were shown in the EDU Film Festival. Having the opportunity to connect with professionals so early in my journey really pushed me to work a lot harder at marketing myself and networking with people who supported me in my community. I started interning for two artists who shared a studio in the Casket building in North East Minneapolis. I got to work alongside Sandra Felemovicious and Debbie Wolk who showed me what it was like managing your own art business and studio. I got to help out with bridal parties and prepping for art shows around the city. these experiences showed me the path that my art could lead me down and it was an impact point in my life that opened up so many new doors. from May 2023 to March 2024 I crafted my senior year portfolio around the idea of gender identities and how our ideas on gender are challenged as society works to correct the diversities between men and women. I worked a lot in acrylic paint, oil pastel, and mixed media, focusing on portraiture and color to create a cohesive feel throughout the exhibit. As a result of the long time period of which this portfolio was created, the style of each piece heavily varies in a way that feels harmonious and almost like crafted chaos. My senior portfolio showcased my love for color in a way that my past works hadn't before and I was proud at the result of an improved quality of work along with a higher quantity of pieces included into one portfolio. This portfolio became a huge part of my identity as an artist as I began to post more of my work to social media and allow audiences to watch me in the process of a piece. Working this way forced me to bridge the gap between myself and my intended audiences and provided me with a platform to connect on a more emotional level with the people who supported me. I felt so much pride announcing to my Art Club peers that I would be attending Minneapolis College of Art and Design in the fall and I am so excited to continue my education in fine arts. I feel that I am one step closer to my dream of being an educator and it is even more special now knowing that I'm working towards teaching art. I am so grateful for the staff that helped me through my art journey and I am looking forward to becoming that for another young artist.

I have been playing basketball since I was in third grade. it was a way for me to stay active and healthy and also socialize with other girls from all over the country. It had never been something I had looked at doing for a career but it was fun and my passion and competitiveness kept me playing for years. Even though I loved to play, I constantly struggled with the anxiety and self-doubt that came with it. it started with little things, being on time, staying in shape, and always wanting to be the best player on the floor. I constantly felt that if I wasn't the perfect player then I didn't deserve to play. The game I loved soon turned into something I felt I had to earn and I put so much pressure on myself that if I bent anymore, I was sure to break. And eventually, I did. around middle school, the anxiety around the game had built up so much that I would get physically sick and super upset. my parents had been going through a divorce, school had gotten rough, and basketball had caused so much drama and competition between me and my friends that I didn't feel safe to talk about anything around them because I knew it would come back and affect my playing time. I felt like there was no one on my team that I could trust and this turned into tensions as we entered high school. in my freshman year of high school, my rival competition was my best friend Mariah. we played the same position and took on the same kind of leadership roles and we were pitted against each other time and time again. eventually, I started to feel the weight of competition on me mentally. it began to feel like everyone was against me and it felt as if Mariah was getting all of the recognition and all of the playing time. no matter how hard I worked, no matter how well I played, it never compared to Mariah. Her parents would back her up, the team would back her up, and our coaches would back her up. it felt like I was nothing and I would leave practice every day with low self-worth and this deep sadness I could never really understand. Eventually, my own dad had started to favor Mariah more than me which took a toll on me that I am still trying to work through today. I longed for his approval for so long when I started to go to therapy later that year, I realized that the only reason I really started playing was because for so long my father had compared me to my brothers. all this time I had been playing and trying to prove to my dad that I had an identity of my own yet none of it was worth it when I would look out in the crowd and see that he would only cheer for Mariah and not me. I came out about a year later and I had developed a crush on one of the girls on my summer team. I had known from the beginning that this could complicate things on my team. nothing was more important than our team being successful this summer. so I hid. eventually the feeling of having to hide started to weigh on me. I didn't tell the girls on my team because I knew it would get back to the girl I liked, so I seeked advice from my mom and my coach. they, along with my therapist helped me understand my feelings and had provided me comfort so as to not overthink the stuff outside of basketball. eventually the girls on my team started making fun of us for being the only two openly gay girls on the team and soon after they found out that I actually did like her. she freaked out at me and told our basketball director that I was stalking her and they threatened to kick me off the team. My mom and coach tried to stick up for me but the damage had already been done. I spiralled into a deep depression and battled with suicidal thoughts and public panic attacks for months. I spent everyday feeling like it was my fault, like I should've just kept hiding, like I was stupid for seeking help. this was when I finally decided that basketball wasn't worth it. basketball wasn't worth the panic attacks at dinner, or hiding because I liked a girl, basketball shouldn't have sent me home crying because I felt like I wasn't good enough, basketball was supposed to be fun. I made the decision to quit after my junior year. I spent the whole summer learning how to live without basketball and learning how to love my body even when I wasn't as in shape. some days I felt like life couldn't get any better. I could do art, I could read, I could write, all things that made me extremely happy. But somedays I felt sick to look at myself in the mirror, disgusted. my therapist described it as grief. I didn't really understand it at first because I thought that that was something you only felt when someone died. how could it be grief when basketball had brought me so much pain and stress. how could I be sad over something I didn't really care about losing. the truth was that I did care. my journey through mental health and basketball showed me that it was possible to grieve a part of your life that you have never lived without. quitting a toxic cycle can be freeing and fun but it can also feel scary and lonely and that is how my journey leaving basketball has been. it has been a process learning who I am outside of basketball, some days I struggle, but with good support I am on a healthier path to moving forward.