Undergraduate / "To hone my skills in the art making process, Art Major" - UC transfer [4]

UC Transfer Personal Statement, #1: What is your intended major? Discuss how your interest in the subject developed and describe any experience you have had in the field - such as volunteer work, internships and employment, participation in student organizations and activities - and what you have gained from your involvement.

This draft is a bit rough right now, but I'm really running short on time, so any feedback would be GREATLY appreciated...thank you!!

When I turned five or six, the rickety antique desk in my room slowly began to sag under the burden of hundreds and hundreds of drawings choking its flimsy drawers. I simply couldn't put a pencil down and thus the heaps of colored-on computer paper towered ever higher. Each year, I'd reluctantly empty the desk's drawers out, saving only a choice few felt-tip masterpieces and discarding the rest, ready to replenish my piles of art once more. And to the kitchen table I went, wielding markers and an insatiable appetite for creativity. On the brink of 20 years old, the scene has changed little. Piles of sketchbooks and brushes and pencils and oil paints and turpentine spew from the same paint peeled writing table while mountains of used canvases make their home underneath. Like my old desk, art consumes me, but I can't perceive a life any different.

I intend to major in Studio Art. Art and the process of creating has never been absent from my life. My great-grandmother's and mom's old sketchbooks show me that my unexplainable need to create incessantly has generations-deep origins. In addition, art, and particularly painting and drawing, have been venues through which I can tell stories and show others who I am beneath my exterior. As a soft-spoken and thoughtful individual, art has provided me with a voice when shyness has sometimes stifled my real one.

While I'm the daughter of a blue collar worker and an accountant, both my parents have fostered and encouraged creative expression from an early age: my education in the arts thus began as soon as I expressed an interest. I took piano lessons for nearly a dozen years beginning in first grade and participated in several art classes throughout my early years in school, but my deepest investment in art came when I joined ArtQuest, a specialized arts program at Santa Rosa High School, as a freshman. There, I worked two hours a day (and countless hours at home) for four years learning to accurately render everything from complex still lifes to figurative works to abstract and symbolic pieces. I still believe that applying to that program was one of the best decisions I've made: the commitment it required and the high standards my instructors expected made me the driven art student and person I am today and confirmed my desire to pursue a college degree in studio art. During my senior year in high school, I took two semesters of painting at Santa Rosa Junior College as well, which challenged me further and resulted in a sturdy set of drawing and painting skills and more than adequate preparation to start my junior college career as a full time art major.

Upon graduation from high school, I applied and was employed by the nonprofit organization ArtStart, which provides paid positions to art students and professional artists who work together to paint murals, park benches, and create mosaic works for the city of Santa Rosa and private local clientele. I've spent the past two summers working for ArtStart, and not only have I been fortunate enough to work with and learn from individuals who have made livings creating art, but I have also come to understand that art doesn't have to be an individual process and that this melding of creative thought can result in unexpected and beautiful outcomes.

My education as an art student has seeped into all other aspects of my life. It's something I think about constantly and it has completely affected how I perceive the world and people in it: as potential compositions and striking characters I want to render in paint. Additionally, other activities I've experienced, while not directly related to my intended major, each have had a profound impact on what kind of art I want to make in the future and what I want to express through my work. Volunteering in Katrina-devastated New Orleans, at the local women's shelter, and at various fundraising events as an adolescent has only strengthened my desire to paint other worlds from which I don't come in order to better understand the diversity and individual struggles others face.

As a studio art major, I truly look forward to honing my skills in the art making process as well as being immersed in a community of diverse and creative thinkers. I honestly can't think of a better place to enrich my artistic endeavors and to continue to fill my ancient desk's drawers with meaningful work.