When I was first introduced to art all the back in preschool, I absolutely loathed it. Everything about painting, coloring, and drawing was horrendous to me as I had neither the skill nor patience to draw anything beyond a stick figure. It was so bad that up until the 6^th grade, whenever there was a project that might need some creativity I would ask the same question, “Do we need to color?”.

This passionate disdain for the subject only began to stop when I had a teacher in the 7^th grade who was so enthusiastic about art that my once absolute hatred of it began to soften. Although still not on board with every aspect of art, I did enjoy sculpting and quick sketches. This only became more prominent in high school when I entered an engineering shop and got my hands on CAD software and 3D printers. These were so fun to play with that I eventually found myself creating even with no assignments given. All my free time went to little side projects where I could make cool pieces for the sake of being cool. I made jack-o-lanterns, snowmen, and even a bust of my own face. I had no true art class during this time, but I was still willing and happy to create on my own.

It wasn’t until junior year that I had another official art class. It was remote like many other things at the time, but that just meant that I had more to be more creative with my limited resources. All the projects I made were primarily cardboard, and while not each was fantastic, I constructed a few works I still am fond of to this day.

Most recently, I have taken two art courses at WPI, Essentials of Art and Digital Art. The first was my reintroduction into more traditional art forms such as drawing and charcoal which I had not done since middle school. Much to my surprise, I found myself losing track of time as I put on Spotify and drew for a few hours at a time. This enjoyment only grew as I continued to Digital Art and Adobe products. Although I initially had trouble using its unique drawing method, by my second project I grew to love how precise I could be and that I could undo mistakes. Some of my favorite projects came from this course, and made me glad I chose to do my depth component in art.

As for Makerspace, I have only been able to use it once so far, but it was for a unique project of mine. In high school, I was able to take a scan of my face and make a stl file of it. This means that for the past few years, I have made several humorous products plastered with my face, and when I heard there was a vacuum forming machine in the Makerspace, I decided to take advantage of it. I printed a few miniature models of my face and used those to create a personalized ice cube tray.  However, I feel as if this is just scratching the surface of what can be done with this creative space, and I look forwards to making much more in the coming term.