The 2020 Sentient Furniture Scholarship Winner

Parker Albin | Colorado State University

Award $1000  |  February 28, 2020

The SENTIENT Furniture team is pleased to announce Parker Albin as the winner of The 2020 Sentient Furniture Scholarship for $1,000. Parker, who attends Colorado State University, was selected from a pool of 115 candidates. Candidates had to craft and submit an essay detailing how they have used their creative talents to achieve at their college or university thus far.

Parker wrote a moving essay elaborating on how his creativity has supported him through problem-solving, self-identity, and building a strong character.

Parker is an art major with a concentration in graphic design and a minor in business administration at Colorado State University.

Congratulations, Parker!

Parker’s Winning Essay

Creativity is essential to my major, career, and life to solve problems and create solutions within those fields. I am currently pursuing an art major with a concentration in graphic design, and a minor in business administration at Colorado State University. From objectively learning techniques in foundation classes to expressing myself through personal projects, creativity is a part of who I am, and I strive to succeed through creativity and hard work. This concept of creativity is important for my self-identity, problem-solving, and helps build my character in a progressive way.

Creative problem solving is one of the largest contributors to my success. For example, I have taken many risks in art projects. Throughout my 3D materials and space foundations class, I have crafted many objects with plywood that did not hold up and were not sturdy enough to stand on its own. However, I found creative solutions to all of these projects, whether it be sculpting it into a multi-purpose functional object, or turning pieces into purely abstract pieces. These mistakes and lessons have exercised my ways of thinking creatively. Another example of problem-solving within my art was when I was resizing an advertisement through photoshop for my graphic design internship, the words and fonts turned out to be corrupted. I proceeded to rearrange and create new graphics for the corrupted fonts to convey the same message they needed to address. Thirdly, I decided to minor in business because financially speaking, artists do not make as much, generally. I believe by accustoming myself to learning about the economy and how money works, I can succeed. I believe this is an obstacle I can hurdle, and eventually find a solution to, through thinking and creativity making money. Creative problem solving allows me to take different approaches to problems I would not normally think of.

Self-identity through creative art is important to me and allows me to succeed and reach my highest potential when I feel like I am on the correct page of the book of life. One of my favorite quotes, by Albert Einstein, “Creativity is intelligence having fun.” I believe creative minds are intelligent which adds a human soul and identity to individuals. Expressing myself truly by creating beautiful graphics, clean posters, satisfying designs, and creative logos, gives me a sense of purpose. These actions add up and accumulate in my rich portfolio, but also enriches my mindset. This fresh, motivated mindset helps me locate where I am going with my purpose and where my ability can take me in this exciting future. I have created many successful projects through my foundation classes because of my approach and perspective. For example, in a drawing fundamental class, one of the prompts was “order vs. chaos.” I sketch and think about what to draw while I am active and rock climbing, when all of a sudden an idea pops into my head, about how society morphs and shapes our brain. I end up creating a drawing that consisted of a human brain and conveyed it in a way to tell a story of how a healthy brain before society is slowly morphed throughout the course of a chaotic world. By having a mindset of pure drive fueled by creative passions, it allows me to build a strong character.

Building a strong character throughout many fails, mistakes, and frustrations only builds up how I approach tasks, and through these mistakes, I take a creative route. Throughout the many mistakes I have made in my classes in high school and my foundations in college, I am happy that these happened because it shaped me for the better, only enchanting my creative view and approach. Character development was hard to see as an upside when these frustrations were prevalent and current. I have failed a drawing project and it was detrimental to my grade. I read the prompt wrong, misunderstood what message we had to convey, and almost drew a complete opposite concept of what we had to do. When the whole class was critiquing it, nobody understood it and I was frustrated with myself for not doing many things such as asking for clarification beforehand, not truly understanding the prompt. However, I had to look at this from the bigger picture, and realize this simply a mistake that I can build off of what not to do. The building of a strong character will ultimately help me succeed and enhance my creative mind.

Creativity has helped me grow as a person, helped me understand who I am on a deeper level, and helped me find creative solutions to many problems. No matter what the event is, I believe that creativity is used in everyday lives, and every individual holds creativity in themselves. This has been a lifesaver for me in many cases, and I am proud to say my creativity has helped me get to where I am today.