april 2017 newsletter

“As an RA for the Living Arts community, I've had the pleasure to get to know some fantastic and creative individuals. The most memorable part of my job has been spending time with and bouncing ideas off the members in the community.  

I believe engineering is a heavily bounded creative design process, where inspiration can be drawn from just about anything. Though I'm not sure I could track all the origins of specific lines of thought in solutions I've developed in my coursework, I do believe that the sights and sounds that have surrounded me in the Living Arts community have had influence. The creative process is something I recognize that will be a part of my career and I'm glad that I've had the opportunity to develop it with Living Arts.

Upon graduation, I will be moving to Arizona to work on the guidance navigation and control of rockets. In 5th grade I dreamt of designing and building rockets for my career and it has been a goal I've been working towards ever since.”

“The most memorable part of my time as an RA was the "Creativity Telephone" challenge that the RA's put on. It was exciting seeing people think about the creative process in a new way and the many, many jokes that came out of it! The most challenging part of being an RA for Living Arts was to try to not live in the past. Since I've been so involved in Living Arts throughout my four years here, sometimes I felt like I dwelled too much in my memory of Living Arts as it has been and not thinking about the future of Living Arts.

My goal is to do something creative every day of my life. There's so much to learn! I am applying to artist residencies and currently looking to tour my current solo performance work in addition to making new work. In the long run, I hope to open a creative community for emerging artists that combines my experience with Living Arts and my experience living in co-operative houses.”

"I use my knowledge of the creative process daily both as a content creator in the music field and as a solutions architect as a computer engineer. Being able to come at problems from multiple angles allows me to generate solutions that I would not have considered before that are usually more effective. The creative process knowledge from Living Arts also helps me get around creative blocks I have because of how many methods and mediums Living Arts has exposed me to. I know that even if I get caught up in one medium of creativity, I can always turn to another to expand my outlook on a problem or project. These skills are extremely valuable to any design or production team and I'm grateful that Living Arts has given me so much experience in creativity so that I can contribute in new ways to the projects that I am involved in.

So far I feel that I've been a successful RA in that I've helped build the community, help where needed, and insure an inclusive environment in my hall, and I look forward to returning for another year!"