My Designer Statement
It makes me smile when people are surprised that I went back to school for a degree in graphic design. My first bachelor’s degree is in biology, and I have worked for a water utility company for eighteen years, so I guess to a casual observer I must seem very left-brained. But what most people don’t know is that I also minored in fine art, and that my desire to explore the world of art has grown stronger and stronger over the years.
To me, science and art are not worlds apart. My science background taught me about organizing knowledge and creating systems of order in the natural world. Art has taught me how to create my own sense of order, and express that through different mediums of color, shapes and images. My biology degree required me to be precise in my calculations, unbiased in my observations and provide testable explanations to my theories, and that has led me to develop an art style that conveys its message in a clean and concise fashion.
But where art and science deviate is probably the most important reason why I went back to school, and why I plan on continuing my pursuit of communication and design. Science is an expression of the human understanding of the world, and to me, art is an expression of our understanding of ourselves. As a graphic designer, I not only want to use my scientific background to communicate reason and logic, but I want to speak to my viewers on a deeper level, a place that can’t be measured or explained, so that they walk away with more than just the initial sense of my work.
Science has, and will always be an important part of my life as I feel it ties us to the physical world and gives us a foundation to understanding the wonders of the universe. But art, especially to those of us who lack a conventional voice to express ourselves, allows us to share those sides that might otherwise remain unseen. And most importantly, it connects us to each other.