My name is Michaela Wagner and I semi-recently started listening to Jimi Hendrix. I knew of him previously, but I never listened to his music because I was listening to music I already knew, I “didn’t have time to listen to some guy.” That was a lie. I have forever and a day to listen to Jimi Hendrix. Once I had become well-versed in most of Hendrix’s music, I began to become curious about the rest of Jimi Hendrix. I would often wonder: ‘Who is Jimi?’. So, I began researching, and I did not get far when I discovered that Jimi Hendrix’s career lasted about four years before he died. Jimi Hendrix’s career was four years long. Jimi Hendrix, THE Jimi Hendrix. My perspective of many things changed at that moment. It made me realize that I need to stop rushing and that I need to stop stressing so much about making a name for myself because I do not need to be everything yet. I am not Jimi Hendrix, but if a black man in the 1960s can become one of the greats in just four years, there’s nothing that can stop me. Another time I realized I needed to relax about my legacy was about a week ago. I was watching the movie “Tick, Tick...Boom!” This movie is about a songwriter named Jon Larson. Jon is trying to create a musical that is good enough to be performed on Broadway. After taking ten years to write a musical Jon has performed it, and it is not good enough. Jon then goes on to write two other musicals that end up being performed on Broadway titled “Rent” and “Tick, Tick...Boom!” Unfortunately, Jon dies before he can watch either of the masterpieces he created to be performed. His production “Rent” was written in 1991 when Larson was 30 years old, the show debuted in 1996. Larson was 35 years old and died the day before he witnessed “Rent” take off. With this scholarship, I would have the opportunity to begin building my legacy. I would be able to get aid so I would not have to sit and wait and work so much. So maybe one day I can get my minute of fame. So, I will leave you with this question: are you willing to help a young, gay woman who is trying to leave her mark on the world?

My mom is one of my biggest supporters and heroes. She has proved to me repeatedly that you can do anything if you just do it. She proved it to me when she retiled both bathrooms in the house by herself when my older sister and I were away at school. She proved it to me when she slowly began to pay off her many credit cards despite having four mouths to feed and several other debts to pay. She proved it to me when our aunt died, and she took care of everything my aunt left behind. My mom has not stopped working for 40 years for any reason and has even been working two jobs for the past three years to help me and my sister and keep a roof over our heads. Even when she is sick, she still finds ways to put me and my sister first. My mom was the one who showed up to every game of every sport, every parent/teacher conference, and every concert. Even when my sister and I would take her for granted my mom would still show up with open arms and open ears. One time when I was younger, I told my mom I wanted to be an actor. She told me that we could get some headshots of me the next week (we never did, I wanted to be something else when the time came). I told my mom that I wanted to be a musician and she got me a guitar for Christmas. I told her I wanted to take pictures and she got me a camera. Whenever my dad sold my car, my mom saved up and bought me a new one three months later. Like most people, I have spent my entire life fixing everything that has gone wrong in one way or another. But despite that, my mom has proved to me that I can do anything, she has made my possibilities endless. I know one day I will change the world for the better. I know because I do not have any other options. All my life my mom has taught me that I can do anything if I just do it. So, I will. There is no man and no racial barrier that will dull my shine because my mom takes particular care of me. Even when everything is said and done after I leave this Earth almost everyone will know the name: Michaela Wagner, because my mom said so.

Even from an early age I realized that education was important to me. I love and have loved learning new things for forever. I learned the true importance of education when my mom told me that my older sister and I would be moving schools because “I had to choose because you guys getting an education or feeding us.” When I heard my mom announce that to us, I remember my blood ran cold. I was considerably young, around seven or eight years old. But even for how inexperienced with everything I was at that moment, I could still recognize that anything that is competing with food must be worthwhile. Soon after I graduated high school my aunt died. I was about four months into my colligate career at Cottey College. I was learning everything, from the Rwandan Genocide to the Seven Deadly Sins to what communication means to a community. Though it was difficult because of sports, I felt like a sponge. I remember when my aunt died, I had just gotten done studying for a final, I got a text from my mom that read “Aunt Margo died.” As soon as I read that text, I had a flashback of my aunt telling me and my family, “As soon as the girls graduate high school, I’ll be ready to go.” That same quote flashed through my mind as I was coughing through her funeral service – I had been sick since the week before. The pastor of the service visited her before she died, and he informed us that she seemed very calm. I cannot help but wonder if that was my fault for getting a high school diploma. The service continued and another pastor came up and read my aunt’s achievements, I do not remember exactly what they were, but I know she got a Masters in Something and traveled the world. I remember wanting to be like her and I remember being upset that I will no longer have the guidance from her to help achieve that goal. I am Michaela Wagner, I am extremely interested in people and art. One day I will have my art in a museum that will help tell my story and influence other people to tell their story. Education is important to me because I love learning and because my aunt stayed with us to witness it. Getting this scholarship would mean I have the chance to carry on my aunt’s legacy. Thank you!

There are not very many things that make sense to me in this universe. I do not understand why people hate, I understand even less why people love. I never understood why my parents said they loved me while punishing me in a manner that displayed the opposite of love. But one thing I do understand is art. The colors, the shapes, the sense of passion and understanding I feel whenever I am working on a piece. That makes sense to me. I understand it because I can communicate thoughts and feelings I do not have the vocabulary for. More often than not the words are not enough to describe what I feel. So, I use art. I must have something to hold onto. A lot of times I feel disconnected from my culture because I spend – and have spent – a lot of my life surrounded by white people. But, when I see artwork that was created by black people it makes me feel more grounded. I know some little black boys and girls feel the same way I do who probably are feeling the same way I felt and I wish to carry on that legacy and continue the pattern of grounded-ness that art brought to me. Something that inspires me to do art is my inability to communicate my feelings with the people around me. In this case, I am not just simply talking about the words, I am also talking about the people around me not having the working conscience to listen. If I got a dollar for every time a white person told me, “Oh I don’t get into stuff like that,” in the middle of me telling them a story of racism I experienced, I would not need this scholarship. Too many times white people describe racism as “uncomfortable” which implies the existence of “comfortable”. But, what is comfortable? Is it getting followed around stores? Or is it having to deal with all of your friends asking what they should do whenever a Black man gets killed by police while you are trying to process the fact that half the country hates you? Of course not. It is a privilege to even be able to think, “Oh I don’t get into stuff like that.” So what inspires me the most is forcing the majority to be uncomfortable for a moment because it is the least they could do. My name is Michaela Wagner and I like to make white people uneasy by showing them a glimpse of our reality.

The everyday world inspires me as an artist by just existing. Everything around me, whether it is good or bad or dirty. The world and the people around me are my muse. Taking in the world around me and interpreting it so I can turn it into something that is me.

All of my friends tell me I am an only child. This would not be a significant statement apart from the revelation that I have three siblings (four if you can count the deceased). It always amuses me when people I am familiar with discover I have siblings. They are always so surprised, while I am joyous that I could keep my charade of growing up alone for so long. It always sounded so nice to me, Michaela Wagner: the artist, the only child. Growing up I always seemed to want to be alone. Whether it was to escape the bullying of my older sister or the abandonment of my peers. Alone was how I liked it. But, alas a symptom of my isolation I found myself often feeling lonely. This shadow of loneliness I carried with me encouraged me to pour itself into art. So, I did. I turned this unbearing emptiness into a powerful, unstoppable entity that is me. An art piece that is special to me is a work created by Raoof Haghighi. The piece is graphite on paper, it is a drawing of a girl standing in a field, and her genitals are cut out of her body and placed next to her in the field. The piece is titled “Just Take Them and Leave Me Alone”. This piece is special to me because of how often I am sexualized. Growing up a woman is a hardship in itself having to deal with catcalling, gendered dress codes, and rape culture. When I first saw this piece I became obsessed with it. I felt that I had finally been seen. Funny enough this piece helped me realize it was normal to become exhausted from people looking at you but only seeing your body. Not in a way that is begging and pleading for someone to see you as more than a body but just walking away from the empty glances that only perceive me as a sperm dumpster. Pardon me, my next paragraph is going to be quite cliché: Art has been a big part of me and my life, I remember one of my first drawings was of Arthur the Aardvark. I made my mom hang it on the fridge in all of its janky circle glory. From that point on I felt the desperate need to create. That need to create led me to meet some of the people that inspire me the most. People that have taught me that struggle is beauty and that I can do anything. Which is why whenever my mom asks me what I want to do with my life, “Michaela, what do you think you want to do when you get older?” I say, “I want to do art.” “But I don’t want you to struggle financially,” she says. I think of all the beautiful, amazing artists I know who laughed in the faces of people who urged them to sit on their hands instead of chasing their dreams.

Where do I even begin? When I was growing up, finances have almost always been an issue. I have learned how to cut corners financially by shadowing my mom. She taught me where to save when it is safe to splurge. I learned from inspecting my Grandfather’s works how beautiful and emotional art can be. Unfortunately for me, a passion for art and a lack of finances do not work well together. How do you gain the motivation to create art when you have to choose between what you want and what you need? As I got older, I realized how I could use trash in works to emphasize a piece, but there are only so much cardboard boxes and beer cans can accomplish. It is difficult for me to pursue art because I cannot focus completely on it, I cannot fully focus on my passion. I will always have the crippling anxiety in the back of my mind wondering ‘How am I going to pay for this?' Once a month I call my mom crying, telling her I will not be able to finish school. I would say, “I can’t afford it.” “We’ll figure it out,” she will always reply. But I always knew she could not keep that promise to me, I had to try to promise it to myself. So, I went to work. I spent my summer working long hours. When I first began my dreary routine, I was miserable. I hated that my life was all work, I did not have time to pursue my passion. I was completely miserable. But one day, I realized I had to accept that this was going to be my life for the rest of summer and the summer after that and winter break. I realized there was no point in living in my sadness as if I were stuck at the bottom of a pool of water, drowning. So I began to make friends at work and I found little ways to enjoy my job. I became a professional at coordinating my left and right brain at work, creating the perfect mix of work and organization with imagination and creativity. I began to see that drowning is not so scary when you remember you can swim. I love art, I love my family and my friends, and the people I work with. These aspects of my life inspire me and the art I create. But it is exceptionally difficult to focus on these muses when I must constantly worry about whether I will be able to eat next Sunday. But I will keep working and do what it takes, one stroke at a time.