Creative Awakenings, Vol. 2: Singapore Skyline and Sculpture Class
Written by Edith Manfred, Graphic by Anna Porter
Everyone’s childhood had a unique set of elements that brought you to where you are now. Everything from the location you grew up in to what toys were available to you as a kid can guide you in a specific direction, and for us artists, that direction was often influenced by artistic experiences at a very young age. Whatever your “Creative Awakenings” were, they most likely contributed to your current creative passions and involvement at SCAD. My personal set of childhood elements ranges everywhere from a visit to the Crayola factory when I was little to access to iMovie at a hilarious stage in elementary school. Our elements shape us in ways we often don’t realize until later in life, but reflecting on these creative awakenings can be pivotal in understanding our own artistic passions.
One SCAD student whose creative awakenings directly link to her current passion is Katy Villaflor. She is a furniture design major with a passion for combining the regal grandeur of architecture with the personal touch of furniture design. Having grown up in a variety of cities around the world, Katy had a wide world view from an early age, and an influential creative awakening occurred when she lived in Singapore around age nine.
Singapore is known for its contemporary architecture. As a child walking around the Singapore Science Center with her father, a visual artist in his own right, Katy was awestruck looking at a building nearby on the skyline. It was a white tulip-shaped building called the ArtScience Museum, also known as the “Welcoming Hand of Singapore,” its architectural design was enthrallingly playful. To her other side, Katy noticed the Marina Bay Sands, the iconic two-hundred-meter-tall building featuring three large hotel towers and an almost-floating horizontal space at the top. Both buildings are icons of Singapore and stand out against the urban landscape. Katy obsessed over those two buildings and their unique structures. As her father explained the architecture to her, she decided she wanted to build them out of Legos. She was amazed by the buildings, never having seen such creative structures before and realizing with her father that those buildings, and all the other ones on every city skyline in the world have to be designed by someone: an architect. Architecture has the power to turn mental visions of immense spaces into reality, with collaboration and innovative design. While Katy’s trajectory didn’t rocket her straight to an architecture MFA after this experience, it did help her to notice the real-world design and how impactful it can be.
Flash forward several years to a ceramics and sculpture class in Katy’s sophomore year of high school. She had just had the valuable realization that she hates ceramics, and after asking if she could work with other materials besides clay, she was directed to a scrap pile of wood in the back of the studio. She pulled out a 2×2 piece of cherry wood, got a demonstration on saws and drills from her teacher, and went to town. This opened up her brain to the possibilities of wood sculptures and using three-dimensional space as a playground for creativity. For the rest of the year, she worked on projects made out of wood, using life experiences and family travel as inspiration. By senior year, Katy had gotten involved in the building side of design and focused on furniture within the woodworking field. She had fallen in love with not only a medium but also its personal meaning to her.
While the physical side of building was impactful, Katy learned that her interest in furniture actually might have subconsciously come from her childhood of world travel. Her family had moved so many times in her childhood that Katy had lived in over twenty houses and attended eleven schools. And yet, through that tumultuous ride, one thing remained the same in her life: the furniture. No matter where they were living, her family always brought the exact same furniture everywhere they went and arranged it similarly. Only the walls changed, even when the city, country, or even continent varied. This enforced a deep attachment to physical objects and how they can emotionally manipulate space.
We’re all constantly evolving in our artistic practices, and part of that evolution must come from a deep understanding of our childhoods and how they shaped us. Katy grew up to realize that her interest in architecture and her unique worldview, combined with a love for the hands-on intricacies of materials, meant that furniture design unlocked a part of her brain that simply made sense. Creative Awakenings can take many forms, and these ones seem to be puzzle pieces that fit together in a brain meant for design.
Edith is a Documentary Photography major with a minor in Art History, as well as a part of Cross Country and Track & Field teams. Outside of writing and taking photos for District, you’ll probably find her running long distances on the streets of Savannah, updating her blog, or talking about that new podcast she just listened to… again.
