My Life Story (or whatever)

I’ve always been searching for new ways to express myself. Drawing was the first medium I picked up. In my early school years, I remember being the kid who drew those weird comics. I think drawing is so important because it serves as the foundation for every other medium. I would also say that it is the medium I am most comfortable in.

When I was way younger, I spent hours on YouTube learning about origami and other paper crafts since they were extremely popular at the time. I spent a lot of time making paper and cardboard props with scotch tape until one day a family friend gifted me a hot glue gun for my birthday. It was a low temp, cheapo one that couldn’t have cost her more than ten bucks, but it meant the world to me. I used the glue gun to work with more rigid materials and expand past paper crafts. Without it, I don’t think I would have become as fascinated with mixed media arts as I am today. As I grew up, I continued to teach myself skills from the internet and also had the opportunity to attend several extracurricular courses that helped grow my knowledge of fabrication.

It wasn’t until high school that I began to take the arts more seriously. For my freshman year, I attended Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School and studied in their technical theater program. At LaGuardia, I learned carpentry, welding, scene design, sewing, lighting, prop design & fabrication, and technical drawing. My one year at that school has changed how I approach the process of making irreversibly for the better.

*As a brief side note- I don’t really care for theater all that much. I never have. When I applied to the school, I really wanted to go for visual arts. However, I didn’t think I was good enough at it, nor did I have any of my art saved. I figured the techie program would be the next best way to start doing hands-on project-based work. The fact that the work would be done at a specialized high school was also nice, one that didn’t actually require an SHSAT score was even better.

All was well until the public (which unfortunately also included me) was ushered inside indefinitely in the great year of our lord 2020 A.D. I could no longer continue the hands-on work that I had grown to love, and the academics at LaGuardia were nothing to phone home about. So I decided to transfer back to my old school.

I spent most of lock down continuing what I had started in my freshman year: learning as many trades as possible. I got way better at drawing, started learning more about electronics, and immersed myself in the 3D printing community. In 2021, I started and maintained an Etsy store where I repaired and modified old GameCubes. The store was actually pretty successful. When school returned to normal, though, I shut down the shop and got on with life.

Junior & Senior year of high school came and went, and eventually I was off to Connecticut for college. At the time of writing this, I am in my third year, and it has been an amazing experience so far. My university’s open curriculum has allowed me to deepen my understanding of my various interests and acquire many more skills. More recently, I’ve been focusing on finding real-world applications for the skills I have acquired. I thought that creating a website to document the things I continue to make was a necessary part of this journey.