My identity as an artist has been built around my exposure to New Orleans and my involvement in NOCCA. NOCCA was my first true introduction to being an artist, and gave me a deeper sense of what it meant to be one, outside a simple love to create. I was introduced to mediums I have never even heard of prior, and discovered the magnitude of artists’ ideas; how vastly they differed from my own, but in a way that opened my mind. NOCCA is what allowed me to create beyond what just I believed I should create—my canvas started to embody every part of myself. In the Fall, I will be going to Rice University in Houston to major in Studio Art with a concentration in painting. After graduation, I hope to attain a Masters of Fine Arts degree in order to become a university art professor. I will never be able to truly leave New Orleans, though. Many of my experiences as an artist have been related to teaching in some form: I organize art classes at Salvation Army as a volunteer art teacher in order to introduce children to art that did not have ample access to it, and I have worked at the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts as a Teaching Assistant for the past three summers—coming up on four. For the past few years of my life, I have spent the daylight hours of every free week teaching children as young as three how to bring their ideas to life, whether through painting or ceramics. Eventually, as a professor or teacher, I want to give students what NOCCA gave me: a place where they can freely splatter paint and coat the world in color. Teaching has become an essential part of my artistic development, and I plan to stay involved in the New Orleans community and continue to work with young New Orleans artists. Whether through summer programs or workshops for students at NOCCA, I want to provide guidance for young artists to find their deeper sense of what being an artist means, just like what New Orleans helped me to discover. Outside of being a teacher, I hope to work on public art projects, particularly murals—which remain a New Orleans trademark—in order to ensure that art remains accessible to the people who walk these streets every day.

Having moved 17 times and counting, my world is constantly changing. I struggle to fit my life into boxes, unknowing how many times I will have to repeat the same routine, or even when the next move will be. Amidst the chaos, I crafted my own stability and built myself a home through art. My art became more than just a hobby, but my anchor, a refuge to retreat to and find familiarity among uncertainty. Even when joining school after spending the majority of my childhood homeschooled, I found my own way to intertwine my art with my everyday life. Despite the fear I felt being plunged into the all-new experience of high school in a different house and state, I found the courage to push myself forward. I started an art club and writing club at my school, places where I sought to bring comfort to others where I found comfort–through creating. I began going to an art school half-day, and even in the summer I was a teaching assistant at an art academy. What started as searching for something that helped me feel more in control expanded into building a community of people who longed for a feeling of belonging and gained the courage to create it for themselves. A community I knew I would be able to find in the future and a home that would follow me to every new place I moved, and eventually will come with me as I go off on my own. College serves as not only my 18th move, but four years of knowing where I will be. Four years of no “we’re moving next week,” instead four years where I can tack my drawings into the walls and know they will be there tomorrow. Four years where I am surrounded by people who are just as new as I am. Since art has been my home for so long, I know I will take it with me to my next and use it to build my future. The skills I learn, combined with the skills I know now, will serve as my foundation to sharing my art with the world. To me, that is opening my doors and welcoming others not only into my sanctuary, but encouraging them to open the doors to their own home, whatever they might consider that to be.