Creative Awakenings Vol. 3: Parking Garages and Coloring with Crayons

Written by Edith Manfred, Graphic by Anna Porter

The trajectory from creating playful childhood art with crayons to studying a specific creative career like graphic design or photography is a storied one. Pretty much everyone makes some sort of art as a kid, but not everyone uses it as a starting point for a career in the arts. What makes the difference between those who follow those childhood Creative Awakenings into adulthood and those who leave it in art class to pursue non-artistic careers? 

Often, all it takes is one person in school. That someone in your life who tells you that you’re special and that drawing you’ve been doing in mechanical pencil in the margins of your social studies notes is actually really cool. You can do something your entire life, like art, and never even consider that it could be a career. That is, until your high school art teacher tells you, “Hey, I think you could study this in college”. That’s exactly what happened to Jack Major, a rising sophomore at SCAD studying photography. Not the social studies doodles, but the high school art teacher who made all the difference. 

Throughout his upbringing in Colorado, Jack had always been creating something, even if nobody was watching. His favorite thing was the relaxing release of painting. His middle school art teacher was the first person who saw something in him that he didn’t see in himself, as she recognized his artistic eye and pushed him to tap into that inherent creativity. This evolved into getting more and more involved in the school’s art program, doing everything from painting theater sets to joining the art club. It wasn’t until tenth grade that he picked up a camera for the only art class that was available due to COVID-19: Photography. He learned skills like how to create smart compositions and found that it was enjoyable and satisfying to capture a specific moment in time for people to see, but he never really thought of it as a moving art form. Until a specific moment (shall we say “Creative Awakening”) in a Minneapolis airport parking garage in eleventh grade.

The biggest rush of being a photographer is when you see something in public and feel an instinctive urge to take a picture of it, knowing before you even take it how it will look. It’s like you have to take the picture, or else you’ll spend the rest of your life wishing you could finish the image in your head. It can gnaw at you unless you freeze the moment and take the picture. In a rush for inspiration, Jack saw a composition within the circular ramp of a parking garage and just had to take the picture. That photo ended up winning second place at his district art show and gave his art recognition for the first time. Through this rush of excitement and the aftermath of recognition, he realized that photography had the ability to tell a story and move people in a way he hadn’t realized before. Suddenly, it wasn’t just taking a photo; it wasmaking a photo. True photographers know the difference. 

The beautiful thing about crucial creative moments like that is that they can happen at any point in life. Some artistic dreams start with your first box of Crayons, or at least they did for Fiona Coll. From an early age, Fiona loved to draw, especially her favorite animations like Disney and other TV shows. Her family encouraged her to follow that passion for art, which has now led to her pursuing a degree in Graphic Design from SCAD while being on the Track & Field team.But long before that, she can say her first masterpiece was, unfortunately, on her family home’s walls. When she was a toddler, Fiona’s older brother had just bought school supplies for kindergarten. Justifiably intrigued by the shiny new box of Crayons, she secretly took the Crayons and made the walls her canvas, scribbling her masterful artwork all over her family’s perfectly white walls. This classic moment can be a testament to the early affinity for creation that we all feel. Perfectly white walls in your house? Something more interesting belongs there. Though Fiona’s parents had to repaint the walls, her early artistic interest peaked.

Fiona, like many of us art school students, was always “the art kid” and had an early affinity for both drawing and marketing her art to friends. With her mother as an author and her father who studied architecture, her family always had a passion for design. This led to Fiona pursuing a graphic communications class through the Career and Tech Center in the middle of high school. Learning how she could use her artistic eye in a valuable and applicable way for society was fascinating to her, and these classes and teachers helped Fiona realize how essential graphic design is to our daily lives. One day, she’s drawing on the wall in Crayons, and before you know it, she’s naming every font she sees in public. 

Photography and graphic design are both art forms that describe the world how we see it. We use our vision as blueprints for creation. Using the way we see the world artistically to shape the world into a more colorful and well-designed place is the feat that all creatives strive for. Both Jack and Fiona’s creative awakenings exemplify just how important it is when someone recognizes how unique your perspective and ideas are, no matter how young. We all need that supportive figure early on who shows us that our passions can be valuable not only to ourselves but also to a society that needs more creatives. Creative Awakenings shape us, and through them, we can change the world.

You can find more of Jack’s work on his Instagram account or at his website: https://majorphotosjm.com/ 

For more of Fiona’s work, check out her Instagram account or website: https://luluartdiva.wixsite.com/ficov.