100 Drawings: My Journey to Find the Connection Between Humankind and Creaturekind
My transition from vegetarian to veganism began roughly around the time that I decided to focus on art academically and add a second degree to my undergraduate career. I had previously been working towards a degree in Child Development but had been taking several art classes along the way. When I finally decided to add Art as a second major, I was enrolled in the Advanced Drawing course. The first assignment was to pick a topic or theme and create one hundred drawings around this idea. I was at a loss of what to choose – what could I possibly want to draw one hundred times? I mulled over this idea for several days: still life, figure drawing, abstract? None of them appealed to me. I finally approached this assignment with the viewpoint of what would I want to draw one hundred times in an effort to practice and become better at? I was hit with a realization: animals of course!
A Lifetime of Words.
In a small alcove in my parents’ attic there is a plastic box.
The box is tattooed with my name on all sides and contains a series of loose pages and stacks of stapled papers – all filled with penciled words strung together in a narrative fashion. Written words have encompassed my life – perhaps more so than in others’ – from the time I was able to consciously listen to someone read and watch someone write. A love for reading, myself, embedded into my bones at an early age, paving the way for a lifetime of written words that I would eventually construct and create stories out of.