HSA Concentrations: Art

Today’s HSA concentration blog post is a conversation with senior Cindy Wang, who has an art concentration!

How did you pick art to be your concentration?

I’ve always liked art a lot, so when I picked it I didn’t think that much about it. Also a lot of my classes that I had taken already counted as art. Later in the process, I realized how relevant it is to engineering design which is most of my engineering projects. The skills are very transferable.

What have been your favorite art classes so far?

That’s hard to say, I’ve taken three already. The first one is about buildings in Los Angeles–not just Los Angeles but pretty focused in Los Angeles–the environmental, sustainable buildings. It talked a lot about understanding the culture of LA. The second class was about environmental design. Actually, a lot about landscape architecture, and this aspect of design, like engineering design, that’s very focused on the user and the experience. So I found those very applicable to engineering. My third class is about the main stage of design, the drawing class, and I think that helped me a lot with expressing my ideas in clinic. 

Do you have a favorite class you’ve taken for the breadth requirement?

Probably ballet. I’d never thought I’d do ballet. I took it for the breadth requirement, and it kind of changed the way I dance, and now it’s what I do. It’s not what I do every day, but it’s a part of my everyday life.

Do you do any art extracurriculars?

I’m a choreographer for the Mudd play. We work with both the actors and the dancers, which is very interesting to see how those two elements merge. And I also did a little bit of set design. Just seeing different elements of design in this production environment coming together is very interesting.

What does the workload for the art concentration look like?

The art  concentration has theory and practice. For the theory part, the first class I took was a lot about reading and writing essays. Some of the essays are actually pretty fun. They are the narrative type of writing like, “How do you feel about a place?” “What does something bring you?” And that made me think a lot. There’s also analytical writing. And there’s also a lot of drawing and a lot of ideas. I find it very helpful for engineering, because of how much it inspires ideation and the creative side of design

What was your HSA10 [Core humanities class] like?

It was literature, so it’s like storytelling. And I actually didn’t realize until last semester how storytelling is art. Which makes sense because of how creative and how much it paints a picture with words.

Do you have any advice for prefrosh?

Yeah, I think it doesn’t need to be decided right after they get here, because I didn’t decide then. It’s actually the breadth requirement that helped me explore a lot about which I want to concentrate in.