From the Thoughts of an Artist..

I think I have exhausted my own knowledge and opinion on art in our local culture, so I decided to look at the perspective of a real-life local artist and friend of mine, Wendy Weatherly. She is a sophomore architecture major at Texas A&M from Amarillo, TX and has some great thoughts on the topic. When asked about local opportunities for artists to put their work on display, Wendy opened my eyes to some new things that I had not yet discovered.

"Bryan and College Station have many Theatres, I recently saw a play at 'Stage Center' which was very enjoyable. A&M has many organizations which promote the arts, including 'One Love' which had a place set up on campus where students could paint canvases. I loved getting to take a moment out of the day to just paint and reflect. Downtown Bryan also has "first friday" where there are many artistic venues... Jewelry, music, paintings, architecture, furniture, theatre are all forms of art and you can see all these things in downtown Bryan."

Wendy also had a great response when I asked her about her views on the way art can impact the culture of a community suggesting that art has more influence on an individual than a community as a whole.

"Art is abstract and can be interpreted in many ways. This simple thought pertains to our culture because people are all very different: from what we look like to what we believe. Art is prevalent in everyday of life, however, the way you see it will determine how it impacts your life. For example: The Albritton Clock Tower on campus means something to me, because it impacted my route everyday when I walked underneath it, I enjoyed listening to the chime. Most people do not have the same appreciation of the clock tower because they probably didn't have the same experiences as me to make any kind of impact. In many cases; the impact of art is a personal choice. You can choose to make something of it or not."

While Wendy thinks the impact of art depends on the individual, she does believe that its prevalence is significant enough as a of our everyday life. We just have to choose to notice it or not and the way in which we allow it to affect us.

Wendy is a well-rounded artist to say the least. Her skills center more around music and theater. She has been singing and dancing since she was 3 years old and acting since she was 12 years old. Her parents often took her to musicals and exposed her to other creative outlets. Their influence played a role in her interest to use her studies in architecture to possibly design opera houses and performing arts centers. The artwork at the top of the page is actually one of Wendy's originals. She used different mediums such as charcoal, paint, pastels, marker computer renderings and colored pencil to depict the way a knee-joint works. The knee is moving according to a dance move called the "torjette" which was on a staff of sheet music, so the knee also played a song. Through the different "moments" of the diagram you could understand the interior of the knee. Wendy thought it would be cool for me to include this piece because people can often interpret it differently than her primary intention and is an example how art influences an individual how they chose for it to.