I decided to major in art my freshman year of High School when my art teachers showed me a new way of looking at life that supported my creativity.

My concentration is in Art Education with my focus in painting.

I am proud of my work in that pushes the boundaries of how I’ve worked before. Some especially successful works in these adventures have been; my photography from my study abroad in Rome, sculpture class where I worked with video installation and my small paintings and photographs combining paint with printmaking. My senior show will be this semester primarily focusing in painting.

My favorite course so far at UW-Stout so far was Children’s Literature. Outside of class we read through children’s books and got to choose our favorites for their artistic and educational content and present them. I fell in love with David Wiesner’s work style interesting the way he uses visual storytelling with his background in illustration and design. We also had story time during class where the professor read to us in that exaggerated way we read to young children and had an enthralling performance just about every class. It made me feel like a kid again.

I am taking Life Drawing I in order to discover more about the body and to further my figure drawing skills. This is a class I have been looking forward to for the past few years and I am finally up to the challenge. I hope by taking this course I will have more confidence that will carry over from drawing to painting the figure.

I hope to be student teaching this spring and then following graduation to be teaching in a K-12 school district in Minnesota. I have not decided yet if I will be teaching elementary or secondary but am open to the opportunity to teach both!