If you haven’t seen this artist working on her craft in the Fine Arts Building, you have definitely seen her artwork showcased on & off campus. Beautiful, creative, artistic & intelligent, meet this week’s Campus Celebrity Chandler M!
Name: Chandler Makuta
Hometown: Roswell, Georgia
Major: Art
Classification: Senior
HC: Why did you choose VSU?
Chandler: I chose VSU because it was the farthest away from home (Atlanta) without leaving the state, plus like half of my graduating class was going to GA Southern and I wanted a fresh start somewhere new.
HC: What are your favorite hobbies?
Chandler: Hobbies…. things that I do frequently and enjoy it? I love to paint and work with ceramics, which works in my favor since it’s the focus of my major. I also love to cook and share it with my friends. And I guess you could consider it a hobby with how frequent I do it, that I go on Instagram endless explorations looking at makeup artists, makeup brands, and techniques – I’m obsessed with makeup.HC: Where do you see yourself after graduation?
Chandler: I daydream all the time about my post-graduation to be living in California – working in an art gallery and have my own personal studio developing and creating more of my artworks!
HC: You are a great artist, what or who inspired you to become an artist?
Chandler: Thank you – I think that art was just embedded in life mostly because my dad was an architect, so I’ve always been around art, however, I would definitely say my dad was one of the first to really encourage my artistic abilities and to develop them more. When I came to VSU I was a Biology major (HA! that didn’t last long…) I ended up taking a couple intro art classes and would get really excited to go to my art classes instead of going to my core classes. The more classes I took the more invested I became and wanted to pursue my undergraduate degree in something that I was extremely passionate about.
HC: What advice would you give someone who wants to follow in your footsteps?
Chandler: Oh man… I would hope no one would follow in my footsteps ha-ha! I really had to make my own mistakes and learn a lot of lessons to figure out this “path” I’ve created for myself. Now if someone were to be in a similar position where they feel lost – I would say do some serious soul searching, and I don’t mean that in a cheesy way, but genuinely you have to ask yourself what’s important to you in life? What are you willing to invest your time, effort, emotions, money, and energy into? And most importantly, what is going to make you the most happy? For me, working with art every day makes me happy and I think that’s absolutely worth investing into.
HC: Using three words, describe yourself?
Chandler: Describe myself in three words…….. This might actually be the hardest to answer for me I would say I’m creative, go-with-flow, and ever-changing
HCXO!