Marisin McLain ’25 is a Senior from Cornwall Bridge, CT. She has been involved with Studio Art for all four years at the school. She is co-head of the Art Club and the 50th anniversary of coeducation student steering committee, senior advisor to Women in STEM, and a board member of the Computer Science Club and Creative Writing Club. She plans to major or minor in Studio Art at Yale next year.
How did you get involved with visual art?
I was raised in an artistic household. My dad is a professor of art at Parsons School of Design in New York, and my mom is a graphic designer.
Starting from when I was about three, my dad gave me art lessons. We would spend time together in our playroom or the studio in the basement, just working on art projects. He taught me the fundamentals of value, shape, and form and got me a sketchbook that I would fill up every year. I still have a stack of sketchbooks at home filled with paintings that I made as a kid.
I had Mr. Brad Faus as my art teacher as a Prep, and he was instrumental in encouraging me to pursue art. It was always something that I did and something I loved, but I never really thought that it was something I could go far with. He encouraged me to enroll in competitions and put my work in gallery spaces, so that I could feel like I had an identity as an artist beyond just being a student.
What is the art piece that you are most proud of?
The art piece that I’m probably the most proud of is my coeducation mural in the main hallway [outside the English wing]. I came up with the idea for the project in the spring of my Lower Mid year, and I didn’t fi nish it until the summer before my Senior year.
The piece embeds itself into the everyday life of every Hotchkiss student. I’ll stop in the hallways and see people looking for their names on the mural. That is a really exciting moment for me, because I can see clearly that my art is impacting people. That’s what I’ve always wanted to do. It’s every artist’s goal, I think.
What advice would you give to other young artists?
Art is really powerful in the way that it can communicate with people in subtle ways. That happens because you put so much of yourself into the pieces. Getting stuck and frustrated happens a lot with the artistic process, but fight through that.
Work with mediums that you’ve never worked with before and subject matter that challenges you, because once you’re able to overcome those challenges, your pieces can have so much more of yourself in them. That, in turn, is going to connect with your audience so much more.
