A Wall of Fine Art

If you told my high school self that one day I’d end my freshman year of college with a full wall of my drawings on display, I probably wouldn’t have believed you.

Back then, art wasn’t the center of my world. I loved it, sure, but it wasn’t something I saw as a full-time path. It felt more like a side note—a passion tucked between schoolwork and other expectations.

Arriving at the Rhode Island School of design freshman year changed everything. I started drawing daily—some pieces careful and technical, others loose and emotional. I filled sketchbooks, sticky notes, scraps of printer paper. I struggling through fine art drawing classes more intense than anything I had experienced in high school. I spent the better half of my freshman spring semester focusing on one body of work. Fifty drawings, to be exact.

By the end of the year, those fifty drawings filled an entire wall. Each one a moment in time—a thought, an emotion, a question. Some were intimate studies of people or places. Others were abstract reflections of where my mind wandered late at night in the studio. Together, they formed a record of growth. Not just in skill, but in voice.

What mattered most wasn’t just the display, but what it represented. The theme was memory, how can we bring memories back to live in a visual way without just a photography, but from what we remeber. What in those moments meant to most to me was what came through in each piece of work.

That wall was proof that I’d made space for myself as an artist. That I’d gone from doubting whether this could be my focus to showing up every day with intention and vulnerability. It was about giving myself permission to take art seriously—and learning what it means to build something from nothing but practice, time, and trust in yourself.

I didn’t start this journey certain of where it would lead. But standing in front of those fifty drawings, I knew: this is where I’m meant to be.