I began pursing my fascination with food and the environment at a very young age, my family’s massive home garden having provided some of my fondest childhood memories. My father and I would spend hours at a time from March to October preparing beds, planting, watering, weeding, and harvesting. During the final spring of high school, I decided to intern at a local organic vegetable farm, where I became an employee the following year.
I started my college career majoring in environmental studies and minoring in food systems and French. My first spring break in college I chose to partake in UVM’s Food Justice alternative spring break, where we volunteered with various Vermont-based food justice organizations, including the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf, the St. Albans Food Shelf, the Vermont Food Bank, Common Roots, the Intervale, and Hunger Free Vermont. Since then, I have volunteered with the Intervale, Pine Island Farm, and the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf whenever my busy college schedule would allow. Last summer, I was a gleaning and food demo intern for the Vermont Foodbank. However, through all of this work, something was missing. Art had been my greatest passion since pre-school, having been rewarded for my drawings with gumdrops from my teacher. Due to the stigma surrounding art majors, I was dissuaded from pursuing it in college. However, last fall I took a graphic design course and I realized that art is what I actually want to do with my life, in particular graphic design. In January, I switched my major to studio art, changed environmental studies to a minor and maintained my French minor. While some of the themes of my pieces are more common (e.g., Eat Local), my hope is to encourage the viewer to consider the themes from new perspectives, and perhaps consider components of food justice that they might not have thought of otherwise.
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