By Josue Acevedo, staff writer
As a child, I always had a big imagination and lots of creativity. To release all of that, I did art, specifically drawing.
Art was my passion throughout all of my childhood. It was something I enjoyed, adored & overall just made me feel happy. It was an escape for me where I expressed myself. I was truly myself and it was where my imagination came to reality.
My love for art started when I first started attending the Boys and Girls Club after-school program in the Tenderloin. I’ve been attending the program since I was about 5 years old, so I’m really close to the staff there. They’re like a second family to me. They basically raised me, and they shaped the person I am today. I still attend there to this day, but in a different space where high schoolers attend.
The art director named Kay was my inspiration and the main reasons I liked art. When I met him we instantly connected and he showed me all different sorts of art styles, abstract art, and other styles that you could ever imagine. Kay was always encouraging me to do my best and that art itself was a form of expression, a form of which anything that I felt or anything that I imagined can be transferred through art.
I experimented with many forms of art, drawing being one among them. I remember in 1st grade having one of my drawings displayed in a gallery exhibit, alongside other other children’s art portraits. I don’t recall many of the details, but I do remember feeling quite thrilled and proud that one of my drawings was on display where everyone could see it.
I continued to love doing art all the way through elementary school, but I slowly started to lose interest in it when I got into middle school. During that time, I started to develop other interests, like music, reading, and other after-school activities, but also, school took up most of my free time. Having to balance after school activities and school itself was challenging and took most of my time so I ended up cutting out art as one of my pastimes.
Although I’m not focused on getting better as an artist, art has a special place in my heart because it helped me get through my struggles & it also made me happy. It was something I enjoyed and something I did everyday.
