Blossom and I weighed almost the same amount when she first hopped into my arms. That is to say, when she first clobbered into me at a whopping 50 pounds after rounding the corner to our dilapidated green couch and barreling into our living room. My mom brought her home that day in 2012 after her serving shift at our local pizza restaurant, when I was freshly into first grade and my sixth year of living. The agreement was to foster the obscenely overweight and hyperactive dog just for one night until they had made arrangements with her previous owner, an elderly woman who had suffered a hip fracture after a fall. Thirteen years later, Blossom is just beginning to forgive us for the grueling diet of green beans and portion-cuts that imply her now healthy beagle size of 25 pounds. We have both since outgrown that house where we first met, with blueberry and rhubarb in the backyard, with a pottery shed and a wildly strange landscaping choice of cacti, otherwise unpopular in Western North Carolina yards. It is on our daily long walks that we walk by this house and judge its dilapidation by the number of memories that now elude us. I can no longer remember the bed we used to share, though I imagine it to be a pink one, quilted or tufted. We resume as we bend and corkscrew our way around black mountain, repeating the pattern listed above. I follow her arthritic tepid rhythm, interrupted periodically by the tangents of her hound dog nose that lead us astray. On to Rhododendron avenue, where Blossom used to chase ducks, while I sustained some collateral damage from a divorce and three rounds of the stomach flu in third grade. Up the road three miles, though old legs seldom make it now, is my grandma's house, who coos over blossoms velvet ears and showers down upon her a storm of treats. As we summit the hill to downtown, I prepare for the many stops and smiles to make in every store, restaurant, and front porch. We move as the conglomerate everyone knows us to be. Kicking up dust behind us, raising hell, and howling all over town. Yes, it would be typical to see her powder-white face peeking out the passenger side of my Honda, see her bounding towards strangers on the trail or up the steps to restaurant backdoors where she receives her unspoken order of grilled chicken. My aunt, as a vet technician, surmises that healthy beagles like her may live into their early twenties. But as we both ease into our nineteenth years, our days and walks slow to a calm, reflective pulse. In the background of her cloudy eyes I can just make out the of the pile of stuff I have begun to collect for my dorm room. I cannot attest to many memories in my life without Blossom. Which is to say, I have been the undeserving recipient of lifelong companionship as relentless as a beagle's scent tracking. I should have known the weight that Blossom would take on when she hopped into my lap that first afternoon, and perhaps I did despite my age. If I were able to separate her soul from mine, I would see the considerable burden of growing up and the inability to give all the love you have in a short 13 years together. If I had to guess though, I’d say we did a pretty amazing job of it.

"Thats definitely a eastern white pine, no question about it," I argue with my best friend, who, astonishingly, shares my love for trees. "See look at the needles, five in one bunch." I remember this heated conversation vividly, spent at lunch under our canopy of deciduous rainforest at our high school nestled in Appalachia. I had been drawing the silhouettes of white pines unknowingly for years, practicing and mimicking their shapes by my own hand since I could hold a pencil. Despite my mother's official profession as a waitress at our local pizza place, she remained in my mind a voracious botanist, teaching me everything I know and love about the ecosystem of the blue ridge mountains in which I was born. Since my indoctrination into the world of plants and life that surrounds me, it has been my defense that their presence alone insists upon artistic inspiration. Searching for the true meaning of why making art outside has always resonated with me, I came across my answer while reading Robin Wall Kimmerer's "Braiding Sweetgrass". Kimmerer presents the importance of reciprocity with the Earth as a relationship cultivated and sustained by many indigenous cultures including her own. Immediately I understood. We have been given a marvelous and densely intricate creation to observe. To interact with the Earth through art is to establish a give and take of reciprocity. A true connection. I long to represent the beautiful and diverse region of Appalachia which I call home. My artistic endeavors allow me to share with the world the rich relationship I have cultivated with the mountains and all of their inhabitants, great and small. To pursue art in higher education is to deepen this blossoming reciprocity I have only just begun to explore. Who knows where it might take me.

I began working with large gouache pieces after exploring a period of life spent messily reconciling with my inner child. Broad, loose strokes and bright opaque slathers allowed for a sort of freedom I longed for both physically and artistically. What began as a divergence from my path of taught-wrist graphite portraits and oil paintings has since become my favorite medium. Had it really been so long that i'd forgotten the pleasures of finger painting on sheets as large as me? I started what would become my favorite piece while sitting criss-crossed on the floor of my studio while in residency. Around midnight, I grabbed huge pieces of construction paper, too burnt out and uninspired to even treat the paper before I started applying paint. I watched the paper buckle but resumed, only concerned and absorbed by the vision I intended to execute. The subject was a film photo I had taken of a few friends by a bonfire. Truthfully, little had been on my mind about the choice of the image except for the richness of orange reflected in their faces. I wanted that color on paper and thought of nothing else. Around 5 am I had my favorite piece I've created. It's messy and the opposite of technical. It's trying to say something and failing miserably. It's my friends with their faces obscured. But undeniably it's me; right there on that big piece of construction paper.

To pursue art was never a question. As long as I can remember, there were never any nervous claims as to what shape art would take in my life. Art would largely persist, instead, as the medium through which I would observe and reflect the beauty I absorb everyday in my surroundings. I have never been displaced from my excessive admiration for the life I have been given. My community, my family, my hometown and even the traffic lights that line its streets are to be beheld. All of it demands to be synthesized into expression. What began as young hands tracing the line of the kudzu vine that wraps around my house, manifested into writing poetry, publishing zines, painting murals, sewing quilts, and any other artistic endeavor I could manage. What has for many other young artists existed as a pursuit one could leave at the easel, has eluded passion and taken over my field of vision and mindset. I believe that what my awareness has provided me is only suited for the reimbursing hands of reciprocity. I will create to serve what I have been afforded. While this ambition will persist unwaveringly outside of the classroom, I long to bolster my interest in the quality of my craft. To learn, fail, exhibit, teach and grow by way of arts education has been clouded by the desire to provide income for myself and attain financial sufficiency. Oil paint, film photography and color printing of zines are all noble pursuits, but costly in the wake of minimum wage earning and no financial support awarded from my family. To be considered for the Hunter Dean Temple Art Scholarship would provide freedom from the qualms of monetary insecurity and allow me to create with unabridged potential.