Eryn Conley
Northwest Pennsylvania Art Association
Scholarship Competition Essay
June 21st, 2021
Before I dive into my plans for furthering my education and what art really means to me, I would like to take a brief moment to give my thanks to whomever may be reading this paper and reviewing my artwork.
In the fall of this year, I will be attending College for Creative Studies, a design school located in Detroit, Michigan. Upon selecting CCS as my school of choice, I decided that I will be majoring in the field of Illustration. I am certain that I will do exceptionally well in Illustration due to my precise and technical drawing ability and skill level. I know many opportunities will open up for me in the near future, and I will become a professional in my time I spend in design school and out in the world.
One major ambition I have is to not only gain more hands-on experience and skill growth through my studies, but to discover a career I can see myself doing for a living and genuinely enjoy whatever it is I choose to do. I desire to keep creating new illustrations and better ideas to help me expand my knowledge about my major. I aspire to be the artist I’ve always wanted to become ever since I was three years old.
Art has forever been part of me for as long as I can remember. It has had the most significant impact on my everyday life, and it has shaped everything that I’ve done thus far. When I was around the age of three, I used whatever materials I could get my hands on to make pictures, as any young child would do. I never had any childhood friends to play with due to where I lived, and there was not much else to do but draw. So, I grabbed hold of my love for creating, and began to illustrate things that fascinated me.
I had a very pronounced attraction to living things; wildlife takes up a considerable part of that attraction from living in the midst of nowhere in my small town. I found enjoyment whenever I would go outdoors, searching for anything and everything that I saw. Even now, 15 years later, I continue to have that identical affection for illustrating not only animals, but things I find absolutely fascinating to the eye. Art has, and always will, keep me going and push me to greater heights than before.
Northwest Pennsylvania Art Association
Scholarship Competition Essay
June 21st, 2021
Before I dive into my plans for furthering my education and what art really means to me, I would like to take a brief moment to give my thanks to whomever may be reading this paper and reviewing my artwork.
In the fall of this year, I will be attending College for Creative Studies, a design school located in Detroit, Michigan. Upon selecting CCS as my school of choice, I decided that I will be majoring in the field of Illustration. I am certain that I will do exceptionally well in Illustration due to my precise and technical drawing ability and skill level. I know many opportunities will open up for me in the near future, and I will become a professional in my time I spend in design school and out in the world.
One major ambition I have is to not only gain more hands-on experience and skill growth through my studies, but to discover a career I can see myself doing for a living and genuinely enjoy whatever it is I choose to do. I desire to keep creating new illustrations and better ideas to help me expand my knowledge about my major. I aspire to be the artist I’ve always wanted to become ever since I was three years old.
Art has forever been part of me for as long as I can remember. It has had the most significant impact on my everyday life, and it has shaped everything that I’ve done thus far. When I was around the age of three, I used whatever materials I could get my hands on to make pictures, as any young child would do. I never had any childhood friends to play with due to where I lived, and there was not much else to do but draw. So, I grabbed hold of my love for creating, and began to illustrate things that fascinated me.
I had a very pronounced attraction to living things; wildlife takes up a considerable part of that attraction from living in the midst of nowhere in my small town. I found enjoyment whenever I would go outdoors, searching for anything and everything that I saw. Even now, 15 years later, I continue to have that identical affection for illustrating not only animals, but things I find absolutely fascinating to the eye. Art has, and always will, keep me going and push me to greater heights than before.
Crawford County Career & Technical Center
Northwest Pennsylvania Artists Association PO Box 6156
Erie, PA 16512-0156
June 15, 2021
To Whom It May Concern,
It is my honor to offer this letter of recommendation for Eryn Conley, who is applying for the Northwest Pennsylvania Artists Association High School Scholarship for 2021. Eryn has been a student of mine in the Commercial Art program at the Crawford County Career and Technical Center for her Junior and Senior years of high school. Students that attend the Career Center are enrolled for half days, approximately 2 1/2 to 3 hours per day. I feel confident that I can speak as a person that knows Eryn’s abilities in order to offer an accurate portrayal of her.
Eryn has the sensitivity and the eye of an artist. She entered my class having higher level skills than the average student and has since grown to be one of the finest students I have ever had in the program. Besides having professional level skills in the fundamentals of drawing, color theory, proportion and composition, she has shown a sensitivity to form that is uncommon for a person of her age. Any artist could recognize this simply by observing her line quality. She is deeply connected to the subject through the expressiveness of the lines that build her work.
As a person, Eryn is exceedingly intelligent. Although I often list intelligence in many of my recommendations, Eryn exhibits higher level intelligence, what I would call being aware of ‘the big picture,’ that is so rare among many young people. She is one of the few students I have had that can anticipate what is required before being prompted and learns new skills at an extremely rapid rate. She is self motivated and is driven towards completing what she sets out to do and works at a professional level now as a teenager. She is also an extremely fine person. Eryn is very thoughtful, and interacts and engages with others based on observation and careful thought before acting. She is a natural leader and has become the inspiration for her class despite the hardships that the pandemic has beset upon education. She is a marvelous young woman and I will miss her spirit and her dedication in the classroom. Eryn has been accepted into the Illustration program at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, MI and will begin her studies in the Fall of 2021.
I wholeheartedly recommend Eryn Conley for scholarship consideration and I sincerely thank NPAA for continuing to support the continuing education of our future artists through your generous scholarships. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at your convenience.
Sincerely,
Dennis O’Laughlin
Commercial Art Instructor,
Crawford County Career and Technical Center
Northwest Pennsylvania Artists Association PO Box 6156
Erie, PA 16512-0156
June 15, 2021
To Whom It May Concern,
It is my honor to offer this letter of recommendation for Eryn Conley, who is applying for the Northwest Pennsylvania Artists Association High School Scholarship for 2021. Eryn has been a student of mine in the Commercial Art program at the Crawford County Career and Technical Center for her Junior and Senior years of high school. Students that attend the Career Center are enrolled for half days, approximately 2 1/2 to 3 hours per day. I feel confident that I can speak as a person that knows Eryn’s abilities in order to offer an accurate portrayal of her.
Eryn has the sensitivity and the eye of an artist. She entered my class having higher level skills than the average student and has since grown to be one of the finest students I have ever had in the program. Besides having professional level skills in the fundamentals of drawing, color theory, proportion and composition, she has shown a sensitivity to form that is uncommon for a person of her age. Any artist could recognize this simply by observing her line quality. She is deeply connected to the subject through the expressiveness of the lines that build her work.
As a person, Eryn is exceedingly intelligent. Although I often list intelligence in many of my recommendations, Eryn exhibits higher level intelligence, what I would call being aware of ‘the big picture,’ that is so rare among many young people. She is one of the few students I have had that can anticipate what is required before being prompted and learns new skills at an extremely rapid rate. She is self motivated and is driven towards completing what she sets out to do and works at a professional level now as a teenager. She is also an extremely fine person. Eryn is very thoughtful, and interacts and engages with others based on observation and careful thought before acting. She is a natural leader and has become the inspiration for her class despite the hardships that the pandemic has beset upon education. She is a marvelous young woman and I will miss her spirit and her dedication in the classroom. Eryn has been accepted into the Illustration program at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, MI and will begin her studies in the Fall of 2021.
I wholeheartedly recommend Eryn Conley for scholarship consideration and I sincerely thank NPAA for continuing to support the continuing education of our future artists through your generous scholarships. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at your convenience.
Sincerely,
Dennis O’Laughlin
Commercial Art Instructor,
Crawford County Career and Technical Center
Mia Larkin
10 June 2021
I will be attending University of Pittsburgh for the fall 2021 term, with a major of Architecture. Since there are so many routes you can chose from with an architecture degree, I am still deciding on what career I would want to pursue. I am considering a few options such as a urban planner, I want to create spaces that people are able to live in and with its constant change, I want to be able to cater to this change. There is also other jobs that you could use with this major. Such as a furniture designer, creating ideas to make pieces of furniture that people could use is a dream of mine, although it may be difficult, it is a viable option I am open too, and create pieces of works that stand out from rest of my peers. Art has been apart with me for my whole life and I see it as an outlet of my emotions. I find it hard for myself to write my feelings on paper and to communicate them to other people with it making sense. But being able to sketch, draw, and paint them instead is much easier. My art also hopefully speaks to other people that are going through the same life events as me, and this is able to create a relationship between my art and the viewer. Art is a way to express my journey of finding myself as well. To elaborate on this, I was adopted from China and my parents are white, and I’ve always struggled with my culture and who I am because I did not grow up learning it. Therefore, in recent tears, my art shows my journey of coming to realizations of who I am and my culture.
10 June 2021
I will be attending University of Pittsburgh for the fall 2021 term, with a major of Architecture. Since there are so many routes you can chose from with an architecture degree, I am still deciding on what career I would want to pursue. I am considering a few options such as a urban planner, I want to create spaces that people are able to live in and with its constant change, I want to be able to cater to this change. There is also other jobs that you could use with this major. Such as a furniture designer, creating ideas to make pieces of furniture that people could use is a dream of mine, although it may be difficult, it is a viable option I am open too, and create pieces of works that stand out from rest of my peers. Art has been apart with me for my whole life and I see it as an outlet of my emotions. I find it hard for myself to write my feelings on paper and to communicate them to other people with it making sense. But being able to sketch, draw, and paint them instead is much easier. My art also hopefully speaks to other people that are going through the same life events as me, and this is able to create a relationship between my art and the viewer. Art is a way to express my journey of finding myself as well. To elaborate on this, I was adopted from China and my parents are white, and I’ve always struggled with my culture and who I am because I did not grow up learning it. Therefore, in recent tears, my art shows my journey of coming to realizations of who I am and my culture.
To Whom It May Concern,
I am writing this letter on behalf of Mia Larkin. I have known Mia since she was a freshman at Mercyhurst Preparatory School. During this she has been a student in a number of my classes. Over the last two years she has been in my Art Seminar class, which is an IB/Honors studio art class. It is the highest level studio art class offered by the school.
During this time, I have come to know Mia as a student with a great work ethic. She has always been willing to put in the kind of time necessary to produce high quality work. This spring when we went to remote learning, there would have been ample opportunity to slack off. Instead Mia challenged herself to produce some very sophisticated work on her own. Doing research and solving problems without the benefit of a lot of oversight or instruction.
Mia has also developed her skills in a variety of media over the years. Her hard work has led to steady growth and improvement as an artist. She has also demonstrated on a regular basis an increasingly creative approach to her work. Not afraid to challenge herself, she has independently explored several different ways to make art on her own and the resulting work has been interesting.
Mia has the respect of her peers and her teachers. She has been a pleasure to work with over the years. She responds well to criticism. She is willing to try new things. She has steadily worked to broaden her experiences. She is easy-going, with a good sense of humor. She is the kind of person who puts her peers at ease.
Along with being an exceptional artist, Mia has excelled in the classroom as well. She is regularly on the Honor Roll. She is also active in the community doing service and is involved in athletics as a cheerleader. She manages her time well and is dependable with getting her assignments in on time.
I would definitely recommend Mia as a candidate for this scholarship. Her work ethic, her personality, and her commitment to her talents have made her a valuable member of our community and I am sure that Mia will continue to grow and will be an asset wherever she continues her education.
Sincerely,
Jamie Borowicz Ph.D.
I am writing this letter on behalf of Mia Larkin. I have known Mia since she was a freshman at Mercyhurst Preparatory School. During this she has been a student in a number of my classes. Over the last two years she has been in my Art Seminar class, which is an IB/Honors studio art class. It is the highest level studio art class offered by the school.
During this time, I have come to know Mia as a student with a great work ethic. She has always been willing to put in the kind of time necessary to produce high quality work. This spring when we went to remote learning, there would have been ample opportunity to slack off. Instead Mia challenged herself to produce some very sophisticated work on her own. Doing research and solving problems without the benefit of a lot of oversight or instruction.
Mia has also developed her skills in a variety of media over the years. Her hard work has led to steady growth and improvement as an artist. She has also demonstrated on a regular basis an increasingly creative approach to her work. Not afraid to challenge herself, she has independently explored several different ways to make art on her own and the resulting work has been interesting.
Mia has the respect of her peers and her teachers. She has been a pleasure to work with over the years. She responds well to criticism. She is willing to try new things. She has steadily worked to broaden her experiences. She is easy-going, with a good sense of humor. She is the kind of person who puts her peers at ease.
Along with being an exceptional artist, Mia has excelled in the classroom as well. She is regularly on the Honor Roll. She is also active in the community doing service and is involved in athletics as a cheerleader. She manages her time well and is dependable with getting her assignments in on time.
I would definitely recommend Mia as a candidate for this scholarship. Her work ethic, her personality, and her commitment to her talents have made her a valuable member of our community and I am sure that Mia will continue to grow and will be an asset wherever she continues her education.
Sincerely,
Jamie Borowicz Ph.D.