Spotlight Artist - Summer Balcom

Art has a lot of emotions. In Balcom's case, she experienced a lot of grief and depression in losing her grandmother and sister. However, through her art, she learned how to cope with her feelings and express them. She would draw faces of loved ones, pairs of heads, or sculpt them out.

About Summer Balcom's work, she works with clay and overall art that she can mess with. She referred to it as "functional art" or "surface design" which was an interesting description for her art. Her art takes a lot of time, but they have very simple designs. She tends to make mugs or some kind of pottery; her design on the clay and ceramic pottery tends to be flowers, but because petals are flexible. In my own works with flowers, that is very true haha. She draws them free hand, which was cool because most of my art outside of Graphic Design class is handmade too.

I learned a lot about her work, but also how to be an artist within a community. Balcom talked about how to market work and keeping connections. She said to document your work and post regularly having an online presence, which shows others how you are an active artist, and makes them more inclined to buy from you. She talks about the type of media you could use, like Instagram or TikTok, and how your feed or story can be used as a portfolio of your work. Balcom also makes it clear to really network yourself and communicate; this skill helps to further your goals today and in the future. For example, she got a lot of these opportunities and jobs through her professors noticing her online presence and keeping in contact with them. She even got on the news after someone suggested her!