It was senior year, two weeks before my 18th birthday,
I guess.
I just wasn't feeling well one day.
I was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoblastic
Lymphoma.
And that sort of just changed everything.
I didn't have choices anymore.
I couldn't be anything.
I had to be a cancer patient.
I came to UVA because it's a great school,
and there was a hospital nearby that I
could walk back and forth to.
That's where it all started.
I started taking drawing classes, and sculpture,
and film.
And when I was declared healthy, it was off to the races.
I play in my imagination.
I make things up.
My professors, they love teaching.
And they love this sort of relationship
that they're building with you.
If you have an idea, there's someone here
that's going to help you make it happen.
I created a piece recently that started with just dropping eggs
from 10 feet high.
I'm trying to capture them on a Polaroid camera as they fell.
And it was the idea of trying to capture a moment.
And then had the eggs that kept hitting
the ground, I glued them back together
as a metaphor for the heart, or the way you put yourself
back together after these life-altering moments,
let's say.
That construction of all these elements into something people
can walk around and look at, that's what excites me,
is creating those moments for people.