Director's Note
Spooky season is my favorite season—if it isn’t obvious from the little skeleton family on the bench outside of my office!
While October brings out the ghosts and ghouls, you will find skeletons (not real ones!) and spooky decor around me year-round. People often ask me why, and it always goes back to a simple thought: every single one of us has a skeleton.
Unless you are in forensics or medicine and know how to analyze the nuances of a bone, skeletons are the ultimate great equalizer. When you look at one, there is no race, no gender, no financial status—there is just a human who lived a life. A skeleton is a blank slate. That human could have lived the most fascinating life, endured hardships we will never know, or been quiet, loud, gentle, or bold. There is a purity and elegance in that shared structure.
I see our young artists at NESA the exact same way.
Even though we all come from vastly different backgrounds, every one of us here shares a deep love and devotion to the arts. We have seven distinct majors, all wonderfully different. Some of our students move with effortless grace, while others are proudly and authentically awkward. Some can sing with a voice that would make Orpheus jealous, while others purposely start the "Happy Birthday" song at three different times and in four different keys just to make us laugh. Some can paint a world so vivid you feel you could step right into it, while others struggle to draw a stick figure.
Yet, despite those differences, we are all bonded by an artistic passion that goes all the way down to our bones.
I often wonder if, someday, when someone looks at my own skeleton, they will be able to see the indelible marks that a life dedicated to the arts—and to these incredible students—has left behind. If so, then it will have been a life exceptionally well lived.
