Growing up in a family of artists, I was considered the anomaly of the bunch. My father, an architect; my mother, an interior designer; my aunt, a fashion designer; my grandfather, a movie director; my brother, architecture graduate. And then, there was me, a lowly girl wanting to study brains. Whether my choice to pursue anything but art was a byproduct of wishing to be “different” from the rest or the consequence of my disillusionment of the artist life, my drive towards a non-artsy pursuit was something I took pride in. Though my coursework and extracurriculars in brain sciences were intriguing and continually inspiring(to say the least), given the background I grew up in, the inclination to crave for art was acutely present. At multiple points, I felt that there was a lack of creative outlet amidst the stultifying toil of college life and a sense of deprivation of the artistic spirit that used to inundate my daily life.
So, to take matters into my own hand, since the beginning of my sophomore year, I set out to bring art back into my life. I sang with the Peabody choir, applied for research examining color perception, and, perhaps most rewarding of all, enrolled in a visual arts class. As it being my first ever art class at a college setting, Introduction to Printmaking seemed daunting and unfeasible – an airy-fairy pursuit. Contrary to belief, it has proven to be one of the most inclusive and supportive environments I have ever been in. Cathartic yet stimulating, the class is full of people of diverse majors (ranging from Writing Sems to Computer Science) and of diverse ages who encourage each other, regardless of previous artistic experience, and help one another when things get out of control. On top of the support system within the student body, the physical nature of the studio – a sun-lit room where canvases lay astray in the room with paint-stained desks & chairs scattered all over- naturally elicits and calls forth a sense of relaxed creativity within all of us. In addition, because we are now people of a digital and pixelated age, the hands-on, paper & ink art class has become a necessary respite from the numbing illumination of a computer screen.
