I remember the first day I felt confident calling myself an Artist, so vividly. I would describe it as the only day in my life that I truly felt MANIC.
In November 2020, I saw a vision in my head, so clear I had to find a paper and pencil to scribble it out before the moment was gone. The same day, I downloaded Adobe Illustrator and taught myself how to translate my vision into reality.
The computer, a tool to translate vision into reality. To be an artist in this generation is to fall in love with the computer.
The pure joy of posting my first truly original graphic design piece on @recollectiions. For no other reason but to share my art with the world. The first piece of art I ever made that was truly MINE.
The most self-reflection I’ve ever done in my life (other than when I worked on my abstract autobiographical short film screenplay in 2024) was when I was a senior in high school applying to college. The number of essays I had to write about myself forced me to look within, forced me to discover things about myself.
My favorite writing I did at the time was the first draft of my personal statement. Some excerpts:
- I despise reading sheet music. When I was in 6th grade, I taught myself the piano by ear. It was significantly more satisfying to listen to music and imitate what I was hearing by memorizing the shapes of the keys rather than to think about letters and notes on a piece of paper.
- I started to notice patterns. A minor gave off a similar red-orange tone as E minor, though A was slightly more red. G minor and C minor were my favorites, as a deep, dark purple-blue.
- I remember on long airplane flights with nothing to do, I would listen to music and transcribe the drum patterns I heard. Rather than following a proper sheet music notation, I would draw the shapes in a way that made sense to me. My transcription of a bell pattern looked like morse code, or a forest of burnt trees with no leaves. A hip-hop beat resembled the neck of a guitar.
- While listening to complex hi-hat rhythms on my favorite hip-hop playlist, I suddenly pulled out a paper and began to transcribe what I was hearing, as I realized just how similar it was to marching drumming. As I took my new transcription to the drum set, I began hacking out the same paradiddles and triplet rolls I spent countless hours learning on a football field every week.
- As I learned about how derivations of mathematical formulas clicked like puzzle pieces to explain phenomena in the real world, I was in awe of how neatly everything worked out like a pattern.
- Not only did I see the mathematical process as creative, but I also viewed the end result as a piece of art.
- My junior year, I began exploring abstract art and graphic design. At the time, I had been listening to a song called My Body is a Cage that I had discovered in one of my favorite marching band shows, Babylon by Santa Clara Vanguard. While listening to this song, I had a sudden moment of inspiration, realizing that the lyrics of the song could be interpreted to represent a triumph over feelings of chaos. Furthermore, I realized that I could express these ideas using diagrams of uncertainty and chaos in quantum physics. After teaching myself how to use Adobe illustrator, I changed the axis labels of these diagrams to represent abstract, emotional concepts. It was at this exact moment that I was finally able to combine my love for science with my love of art. I continued to create more pieces about my emotions, using diagrams about multiverses, gravitational waves, the lunar cycle, end-of-universe theories, solar eclipses and so on to express my ideas.
- I was researching the harmonic function for calculus, I realized that these numbers are also linked to harmonics in music on stringed instruments, as well as quantum physics.
- I believe that everything in life can be broken down to a form of art at its roots. This relationship goes vice versa as well, as I also believe that everything in life is formulaic at its core.
I ended up revising this personal statement a lot. The one I submitted is a lot shorter and not as real. That’s why the 1st draft is my favorite, I was really speaking from the heart.
I was supposed to study Astrophysics in college, I ended up switching to Computer Science pretty early on. Sometimes I wish I stuck with it.
I love the unknowns of the universe. Uncertainty or “unknowns” can be scary, but they can also be fascinating – because it means anything is possible.
I can be anything. The future is blinding. I see visions of bright lights.
recollectiions 