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Rashmi suthar Posted 8 years ago
Essay & Composition Writing

Help me making my SOP better

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
I have always been a curious soul. Asking questions and seeking answers from people, and the world in general, comes very naturally to me. The most exciting part of this new journey I am undertaking is the exploration of a completely new culture and environment. I wish to work on my educational, artistic and personal development through this degree. With my education I expect to broaden my point of view and cultivate the ability to be both an innovative artist and responsible entrepreneur. Art has always been a big part of the Indian culture, be it through rangolis at home or paintings in the museums. Things are now changing and art is considered as a commodity, something that was once a hobby only for the rich. I want to explore the western perspective on art the way it is perceived and understood there. Through this understanding combined with my roots I would like to bring shed new light upon the way art is perceived today.
I often participated and won in school drawing competitions and kept scribbling through classes, colors always brought that happiness to me. My father works for Nuclear Power Corporation of India which has its own campus designed for facets of people from around the country who live there. My school days passed by playing volleyball and athletics for years along with participating in all kinds of extracurricular activities. Having been brought up in a culturally diverse surrounding I celebrated festivals with different ethnic groups from my country, enjoying the multifarious diversity of India and its colors. I was always fascinated with different rituals, religious perceptions and tribes. I decided in 9th grade that I wanted to be an Architect simply because it allowed me to sketch and colour buildings. Thankfully, I got into one of the best architecture colleges in the country. MSU (Maharaja Sayajirao University) is one of the oldest institutes in India with around 90 departments and a number of interesting courses. The architecture department gave me strong foundations as the emphasis was on self-doing and self-learning. Brick-by-brick, over a period of five years, I was trained to present myself in front of a jury of professionals. I attained various skills like presentation, drawing, design thinking and the art of communication.
As a part of my curriculum, I did my internship in a contemporary firm called Nuvo designs associated with Brooks Murray architects, london located in Pune, where I got a chance to practice architecture. There I worked on their ongoing and proposed projects, made working presentation drawings and studies for initial proposals. Immersed in an entirely new world, language and people, I had a lot of fun learning about their traditions, rituals, construction techniques, materials, food and general understanding of the world. During this time, I came across the art market while meeting various filmmakers, photographers and painters in the city and Mumbai. I was always interested to see how architecture can integrate a lot of fields. I continued my practice for another year as I failed to clear my examinations in time, but the failure was serendipitous as in it gave me time to further delve into what I loved. I was back to my undergraduate degree with a new perspective. Meanwhile my batch came up with an event called 'Reflection' which was a conceptual trial event to gather architects and artists on one platform. My responsibility was finding sponsors and organizing the 'walk with an architect' event. It was an interesting event where a lot of students from local colleges participated and our juniors still continue the tradition of organizing 'Reflection' every year with fresh themes.
After coming back to education after long, I had the awareness to preserve my individuality as well as the will to help others. I chose the design thesis topic called 'Ashram, a place for self-transformation' which was initially a research to find out a mid-way between science and spirituality and later turned out to be an important event which shaped my life. I did a number of case studies and the research led me travel to the yoga capital 'Rishikesh', where I visited a number of ashrams. The site I chose was in completely different context, in a small temple town on the western coast of India called Gokarna. During the process of designing a building, I understood that architecture was as much about building as it was about creating something seamlessly integrated in its surrounding. My thesis got successfully completed in 2016 and I had decided that I need a gap year to explore my own country and my identity of being an Indian and continue my research topic to better understand what I had begun back then.
The adventure just got started when I took a train to Goa the day I graduated. Over the next 3 months I was backpacking in south India and exploring art festivals like Serendipity and the Kochi Biennale which showcased and curated debates of new Indian and international aesthetics and art experiences and enabled a dialogue among artists, curators, and the public. That was my first participation in the art world and I was encouraged to keep creating art in whatever form. The gap year took courage on my part, as an Indian girl traveling independently also gave me lot of real learnings about life.
The next one year I kept travelling but I had a purpose to find art and artists. My experience here was as much life oriented as it was work. I explored the process of creativity among a variety of individuals and their processes helped me better understand myself and my inclinations. I kept drawing and painting while travelling. My work experience is varied, as a freelancer I did a lot of architecture, paintings and branding projects. I recently launched my own brand called 'The Moving Artist' where I aim to provide art solutions to architects and designers along with doing my own abstract paintings.
Talking about my art style I was moved when I saw Jackson Pollock's working style. The movement after the second world-war brought a lot of interesting art styles to fore and my favorite remains abstract expressionism where an artist learns to let go of his or her ego and expresses through colors. Abstract expressionism was for many the expression of freedom: the freedom to creative controversial works of art, the freedom symbolized by action painting, by the unbridled expressionism of artists completely without fetters. For me it’s about following the unknown and accepting what comes out of that. You have to let something else, something unseen, take control. I have not studied in an art school but I have been reading and doing courses online (coursera) to study modern art and ideas by MOMA, Art and culture strategy by University of Pennsylvania and National Arts Strategies. My passion in knowing about the world of art led me to many inspirational works of Franz Kline and his bold brush strokes, Clyfford Still and his poetic richness in dark and light, Willem de Kooning and his women series, Hans Hoffman with his spatial illusion keep inspiring me. some of the exceptional women painters like Hedda Sterne, Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, Kimsooja and many more makes me fall in love with colors. Considering the fact that the US had a big space then and now for new talents and acceptance, i am looking forward to study in such a country which will expand my horizons and nurture my thoughts and skills.
I want to merge both art and architecture, basically make art an indispensable part of architecture. I aim to be entrepreneurial in nature and a teacher in spirit. My decision to study abroad relates to my personal interests but also my professional goals. I am looking forward to sharing my experience of different cultures with my peers and students in the future. After learning at the world-class facilities offered at your university, I know that I will be capable of attaining my goals and contributing to society in the future.

  
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