“Usually, what I’m best at drawing is…non-people. Ironically, though, some of my best drawings were from the figure drawing class because it was out of the second semester. I’d had more practice.
There was this piece. It’s a man with curly hair, and there’s green in it. It’s called ‘A Stroke of Color.’ I hated it initially. I’d messed up some parts of it, and it got rained on, but I ended up framing it and entering it in a competition, and it won best in show. In the frame and in the gallery, it looked nice, but I didn’t like it very much in the process of making it.
It was in the Hershberger [Art] Gallery for a month, but it was taken down for the next show. It is in my house, currently.
In high school, I did a lot of ceramics—four years of it. I liked doing it with my friends, mostly. Then I started Goshen College last fall to major in architecture, and I didn’t know that architecture was essentially an art major.
The art major has a pre-architecture concentration, so I’m an art major, and then I take a couple of extra classes in physics and architecture and prepare myself for graduate school. That’s just how that works.
I started taking basic drawing and figure drawing, and I began to understand that I enjoyed it.
My long-term goal is still a graduate degree in architecture. Notre Dame has a good program and the University of Cincinnati. Even studying architecture internationally would be great.
I took sculpture during May term with John Mishler. I almost liked that more than drawing! It’s good for the architecture thing, too, model-making. Hopefully, I will have a sculpture up outside on the Goshen College campus. It’s about five and a half feet tall and two feet around, tall and thin. It’s part of a series I called “Kinesis.” This is the second one in the series.
I always figured art was a side hobby, and I would be an engineer. I would often make fun of art majors – “not a real studies” type of thing – but here I am. I still do ceramics a lot.
I almost think I’m ending up like my uncle, Tavi Mounsithiraj. He did sidewalk paintings; he had a gallery for a while. It’s good to be a part of that art community — to know that I can be a part of that community.”
