Dreams to decisions, art student’s path

Art isn’t just a dream or a hobby for this passionate senior. Art is her life and is about to become her livelihood as well, and she wants to make an impact.

“I have such a desire to make sure that everybody I meet feels really comfortable and feels really accepted. So, [with art,] I think I most want to create a safe space that I feel like I have inside me that I want to offer the world,” McKenna Kalesz, senior, said.

Kalesz has been developing her art since elementary school and says she wants to go into the field of animation. She spends a lot of her time practicing her craft, said Kalesz.

“McKenna is a very very driven art and design student. [Art] already is her life but she knew that she wanted to make a profession, and a career, and an impact and a legacy in the art and design field since I knew her her sophomore year,” Kristin LaJeunesse, Kalesz’s art teacher of three years, said.

Kalesz wasn’t always confident in herself though, she said.

“It’s kind of a stereotype for artists to be kind of closed off or to be introverted. And I’m gonna say I definitely was more along that side when I was in elementary and  middle school. I think that my art helped me gain that confidence when I didn’t have it in myself. [When I was younger,] I started to dress super outrageously so people would notice me and I started to spend all my free time trying to improve my skills because I really wanted something to show for myself,” Kalesz said.

When Kalesz was in elementary school, she said, she fell in love with animation after watching the 50th anniversary refurbished version of The Lion King and watching fan-made animatics of one of her favorite book series.

“It’s such a beautiful medium, where you can take a still image, and you can take a live performance, and combine those two worlds. It’s the center point of my two passions and it’s so cool that something exists like that,” Kalesz said.

Kalesz is planning to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. After she graduates from college, she says she hopes to become a storyboard artist or even a director for an animated film.

“[Art’s] considered an unstable career just because when you think of somebody who’s going into a science or something that is a necessity, there’s always going to be work and there’s always going to be stability. But I think that art is a necessity as well,” Kalesz said. “Even if we had every necessity, if there was no art, then life would be devoid of feeling. I think that art is required to have that balance of a good fulfilled life. So I feel like I really want to aid in the continuation of that feeling.”