Although I chose to attend Columbia College Chicago and major in Graphic Design for my undergraduate education, an unexpected thing has happened since I have been here. (Or maybe this experience is to be expected – those of you with more educational experience than me, feel free to let me know!)

I chose Columbia for many reasons, but one of them was that I could apply to the Graphic Design BA program without a portfolio. I hemmed and hawed – both during the extra time I spent after changing high schools during my junior year, and during the gap year that I spent working at a local ice cream shop in my hometown of Minneapolis, Minnesota. I knew I wanted to study something creative (as I always said when I was growing up, “anything that is not math!”) but I did not feel confident in my fine arts abilities, such as drawing and painting. I also did not have anything to show, regardless of my interests in such areas of creative expression.

Similarly, I was not confident about my graphic design abilities, but I had pursued some design classes outside of school and flexed those creative muscles with a little more supervision. What really pushed me to take a leap of faith and head to school for design was a co-worker at my ice cream shop telling me, “You do not have to know how to do something to go to college for it. That is why you go to college – to learn it!”

All of this is to say that I did not come into Columbia College Chicago with a ton of experience. However, as I stayed here for semester after semester, and gained more experience, I began to notice a pattern… my graphic design classes were never my favorite courses to take.

What were those favorites? Often classes designated under fine arts – which I had not had the confidence to choose for myself. If I could go back and do it all over again, I would love to get a degree in Fine Arts so I could spend more time focused on some of these mediums that I’ve come to love, such as printmaking and woodworking. But then again, maybe if that had been my focus, I would have fallen in love with something else!

The woodworking project I have completed that I am the most proud of is the full-length mirror I constructed and framed in my Furniture I class. It was not without its quirks and struggles – to the point that I ended up delaying my flight home at the end of the semester so I could stay and finish it – but it is something I now use daily. It is so fun to be able to give myself credit for building this thing every time I look into it!

Here you can see a close up of the chalky milk paint finish I chose to use. I ended up sanding the painted frame down lightly, and found that it revealed a brighter turquoise color and also showed off the brushstrokes. This patterning might not be in everyone’s taste, but I really love the look of it.

Another project that I am proud of, also made of wood, but in a different discipline, is my woodblock carved relief print from my Printmaking I class. I was not expecting to love this particular type of printmaking as much as I did. I would have continued doing woodblocks the entire class if I had been allowed to!

Above is the spread of finished prints, which I inked in both black and a gradient roll of sea-foam green to blue. I put different densities of ink on different prints to give them varied effects. I also had some challenges while printing the block, as one of my layers in my printing array smushed into my block. This caused some of the warping and rippling you can see behind the fish in some of the prints.

The fish that I chose to carve is a real fish that my boyfriend has! His name is Ziggy, and he is a black and white tropical angelfish. It was really fun to be able to work with such small details of his scales and coloring through carving the wood.

First, I traced the design using transfer paper onto the block. I used my design skills in Illustrator to make an image trace of a picture I took of Ziggy. I then printed that image trace out to use as a transfer guide.

A lot of time had passed between these two photos, and I had done a lot of carving. However, I find it interesting to see them side by side, because you can get a sense for how I adjusted my design and carvings as I went along. If it hadn’t been for the rippling/smushing mistake that I made in the printing array, this definitely would have been my top project of the year. You have to live to learn and you have to learn to live!