I am a recent college grad with a BFA in Fine Arts from Pratt Institute here in NYC. I'm a born and raised New Yorker, lived in the Village my whole life and am fully committed to art and creation for the whole of my life. I find that teaching or instructing is the most meaningful way to engage with art as a profession, and love to help others understand just what you can create and learn and grow with personal engagement with artistic practices. I know that my life and trajectory would have been totally different without the help of some very key programs, classes, and teachers I've had the opportunity to be a part of. the biggest one was my time as a Pratt Young Scholar. The program is for artistically talented high school students within the lower income brackets who don't have the chance to take visual art in their public schools, and they had us take two foundation level arts classes on Pratt's campus from 10th grade to 12th, and one over the summer. The chance to be engaging with the things that you only learn if your instructors have great care and affection for the craft, and to proving to the students that there is much more below the surface in terms of everyones capabilities technically. they gave the the confidence to attend art school and seek professional work. In the year I spent working in the ceramics studio on campus, I spent a full shift every week helping the ceramics club run after class from 4-9, and I realized that the ability to help people gain knowledge and even very basic understandings of the practice, is hard but incredibly heart-warming to see people understand things for the first time. It is not talent or instinct that makes someone a good artist, but a understanding of how things function, leaving them open to explore endless new ways of creating.