Kentucky Governor's School for the Arts taught me photography and created lifelong bonds
My grandfather (Opa) and his family were painters and photographers for generations, and so I grew up with an appreciation for visual arts from a young age. My Opa photographed everything and kept thousands of meticulously cataloged slides. Around middle school, he gave me an old Minolta film camera, and I shot roll after roll and soon set up a darkroom in my bedroom–with my parents’ nervous consent. I developed a documentary approach to photography, continuing the archivist tradition I still maintain today.
In 2007, I attended The Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts in the Visual Arts: New Media discipline. Back then, we were a small group within Visual Arts, but today, the discipline is called Film + Photography. GSA provided me the very first opportunity to truly express myself as a creative person using dozens of media that I otherwise wouldn’t have tried or had access to. As the first and only real summer camp that I ever attended, the summer I spent at GSA was truly a gift.
At GSA '07, I built the confidence to discover my creative voice by not just focusing on motion and still photography, but by creating lifelong bonds and learning with friends across all creative disciplines. At GSA ’07 I met my partner Jonathan, who studied Architecture. Jonathan and I remained friends and creative muses for each other since that summer, and this year we are celebrating our seventh year of marriage– GSA really does have the power to change lives!
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GSA opened doors for me professionally. In my senior year of high school, I took advantage of the Toyota Alumni Fund to support my capstone project, where I created my own handmade photographic emulsions. Supported by a GSA scholarship, I earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Kentucky in Media Arts & Studies, where I fell in love with alternative, handmade, photo processes. I also learned how to compliment my creative works with technology, like building my own digital darkroom timer or programming a robot to generate drawings.
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After graduating from UK, I moved to Baltimore to earn a master’s degree at the Maryland Institute College of Art. It was here that I learned to apply my skills as a creative as well as an engineer for social good. I worked on social justice initiatives in workforce development, earning a post-grad fellowship from the Robert W Deutsch Foundation, and a community fellowship through the Open Society Institute-Baltimore. I helped launch a neighborhood newspaper and started a neighborhood makerspace. Here, I was able to teach photography, programming, making, creative thinking, and entrepreneurship- a beautiful blend of all those skills I started to develop at GSA.
Today, I work as a full stack web engineer at Adobe. While “computer programmer” isn’t the first career that comes to mind for a GSA graduate, my background as a visual creative gives me an edge in the world of engineering. I have a unique skill to speak to both engineers and designers, sometimes even acting in both roles. The collaborative, flexible and creative mindset GSA opened me to, laid the foundation for where I am today. Knowing that, I’m excited for every Kentuckian who gets to experience the thrill and magic of GSA!
Vincent Purcell is a Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts Graduate, Class of 2007. He's from Lexington, Kentucky and now lives in San Francisco, California.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Kentucky Governor's School for the Arts created lifelong bonds
