Profile.

I arrive on floor twenty-one; fifteen floors above my own. The elevator doors glide open, and I am greeted by a large poster of a friendly looking yellow sponge and a pink starfish. I walk out of the elevator and proceed to my right. My interviewee’s room number was 2123, and I struggled to find it at first. I walk the perimeter of the floor, and discover it in the corner. It was just a plain brown door; there were no name markers on it. I hoped she had given me the right room number. I knock with force three times, and wait patiently. After about ten quick seconds, the door flies open and startles me a little.
“Hey! Sorry my room is a little bit messy, I was gone all weekend, and I got back not too long ago” Jennah says. I explain to her that I totally understand, as I was gone all weekend too.

I look past her a little bit as I am entering her dorm room. It is a little bit plain, and not equipped with much. As I look to my left at her bed, I do notice something that catches my interest: a Hello Kitty bed comforter.
“No way! Jennah, I adore your comforter” I say excitedly.
“Hello Kitty is the bomb” she agrees. I am not surprised at the fact that she has a comforter with a character popular among young elementary-aged girls. For the week that I’ve known her, she seemed very free-spirited, and young at heart. I observe her outfit and see something I, for some reason, did not notice when I first entered. She was wearing a Hello Kitty t-shirt. Accommodating her shirt was a pair of black cut-off shorts that looked like she may have chopped them into shorts herself. She was also wearing a necklace with a small metal skull, and few black and white rubber bracelets. The two most prominent things about her, however, were the two lip piercings (known as snake bites), and the blue shoulder-length hair.
“So yeah, this is my dorm!” she exclaims in a uniquely strong southern accent.
“I like it, it is a lot cleaner than mine” I say. She chuckles. By her appearance, I figured that her room would be a bit more messy; she isn’t exactly organized when it comes to school. A couple times when I had first started hanging out with her, she forgot her identification card when we went to grab a bite to eat.

It is slightly interesting how I met this unique girl. On the first day of Pioneer Camp, I was looking for new people to interact with, as that was one of my personal goals for my first year of college. I saw her from a distance, and noticed that she had the appearance and vibe of my friends from my town. I approached the blue-haired girl and basically asked if she wanted to be friends. She said yes, and we continued to hang out throughout the whole rest of the day. Even though I have known her for a little bit now, I chose to interview her because she has a complicated past, and I wanted to dig deep to learn more about this intriguing individual.

We kicked back and relaxed a little bit before I started the interview. She was on her black laptop, occasionally looking away to check her phone for a text. I always knew who it was when a text notification was followed with a smile: it was her boyfriend back in her hometown. I browse the room with my eyes some more, looking at little knick-knacks and her collection of cute bows and headbands. My eyes move to the shelf above her bed and I am immediately drawn to a breathtaking work of art. It was a radiating heart made out of crayons glued to a medium sized canvas. It then looked as if it had been heated from the center, and the crayon wax melted outward.
“Jenna, where did you get this, or did you create it?” I ask.
“Actually yeah. I am the artist! You want my autograph?” she asked jokingly. “I even won an award for it. My high school art teacher said I should submit it, and I won. I didn’t think I was going to. There was a lot of better art.”
“You didn’t think you were going to win?” I asked, shocked. “Jenna this is amazing. I would seriously buy this if it was for sale.” She smiled at my compliment. I wanted to ask a lot more questions about her passion for art, and if she had any of her other works with her. She told me that all the others were back at her house in Gainesville, Texas. That then led me to ask her some questions about this said town, and learn more about her past.

I start out by asking Jennah about her childhood. It was a broad question, but I was willing to listen to all that she had to say. Jenna Savage, age 18, was born and raised in the tiny town of Gainesville, population sixteen thousand. As a young girl, she lived in a small town in the country with her mother, father, and older sister. At the young age of eight, her parents divorced, and her mother was granted custody. She explains to me that she was not very happy when this happened, as she was much closer to her father than her mother. Although the divorce was a struggle, she tells me how she didn’t ever let it get to her too much, and she attempted to focus on other things, like art. She had attended the elementary, middle, and high school in her native town, taking all the art classes that she could. She explained how she would try put her emotions into something visual, trying her hardest to show those emotions though the artwork. She would use classic techniques, like black for representing sad, and possible a lighter and brighter color to represent happiness. She would also use more advanced techniques, such as using hard or soft pressure with the drawing medium she was using to represent anger or lightheartedness, respectively. I was simply amazed by how advanced she was with art, and how she went about producing her works. I was not at all shocked when she said she is here at Texas Woman’s University to pursue a degree in art.

I conclude our little interview with a simple question: “Why art? What is the importance to you?” “I feel as though art has no limits. There is nothing you can and cannot do with art. No set of rules. No formulas. No prior knowledge. All you do is take a medium to whatever you’re producing art on, and begin. You could even have your eyes shut; it doesn’t matter. Eyes wide open or closed tight, you will get your point across. You will tell your story without words, but with sight, which is extremely challenging to do, and I like a good challenge. Art means the world to me because it has always been my escape. You know how people will write letters, seal them in an envelope and never send them? That’s the same kind of escape I use. Happy, sad, excited, numb, whatever feeling you have. There is always a way to present it on a canvas. No matter what.”