Undergraduate / My dad built a kayak; SOP- SAIC - Statement of purpose [4]

Statement of purpose for School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I'm mainly concerned if my ideas are clear enough, but any objective feedback is always super appreciated. Thanks!

When I was in kindergarten my dad build a kayak. I remember going out into his shop to watch him work, excited to see the progress of the sleek wooden boat. I was amazed that something so magnificent could be made by hand. I'm probably the only person in the world who considers my dad an artist; despite him being the average businessman, he can build anything with amazing craftsmanship. It is him who has influenced my interest in art and design most.

My passion for both art and design developed simultaneously. I find that my thoughts about design stem from exploring ideas artistically. I work primarily with ink or acrylic paints and gouaches. The subject matter of my work has always changed, however for about two years now I have developed an interest in making work that references geology, my fathers first trade. I often find myself sifting through old geology texts of my dads-half reading, half tearing out images. It wasn't until this past summer, when I worked in Yellowstone National Park and grew to love mountain climbing, that I was able to witness landscapes like the ones from my father's texts. Ascending a mountain is a unique experience filled with mental and physical challenges. As you pass a certain elevation, you enter an intense geological landscape of scant vegetation, weaning glaciers, and towering couloirs. This newly found, long sought after alien environment, along with the abundant geothermal features of NW Wyoming, influenced my artwork a great deal. I was sketching, painting, writing, and photographing more than I had in a long time.

My design process starts with artistic exploration. It was at the end of the summer, on my last and most difficult climb of the season, that I made the connection between my artwork and design aspirations. We started out at 3 am, with headlamps lighting the way. I spent a few hours in my head as we ascended into the dark, exploring what this surreal landscape was making me feel. And then light broke, we crossed a frigid glacial stream, scaled a bolder field miles wide, and then, after roughly 9 hours of climbing, we made it to the south couloir of Middle Teton. The hardest part of the climb was still to come. So we took a break. Feet away, the thrust up tectonic plate that gave structure to the steep mountain range abruptly stopped and dropped thousands of feet into a small alpine lake. I looked out over what I had just climbed. Boulder fields, glacial meadows, steep rock faces and icy slopes. To negotiate such a landscape requires one to be hyper aware of their surroundings. You must highly consider the space you're in and move with purpose. It was very much a situation of spatial interaction; it was as if I had to design my way perfectly up the face of the mountain in order to achieve the summit. I realized that I don't want to design objects that are merely aesthetically appealing with a hint of function; I want to design objects while taking its space into consideration. I was in school at University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) for industrial design, but I want to concentrate on something more than just form and aesthetic. I want to explore how objects exist in a space so I can progress in design.

I withdrew from UIC my last week at Yellowstone. Partially because of financial strain, but also because I wanted to be in a program that I knew I would take away a lot from. I feel that SAIC's School of Interior Architecture is a program I could grow a lot from. SAIC being so fine arts based would allow me to continue my artistic explorations and still become a designer with the craftsmanship of my father and the purpose of a mountain climber.