By Haron Sharifi, staff member
I was so ecstatic to meet Sabrina Brody, one of the artists feature in this issue of From the Fallout Shelter. On top of drawing art for 14 years, she plays the viola, violin, and a little bit of guitar. Her artwork, titled “Life in Black and White,” is one of my more favorite trio of pieces that were submitted; specifically, one of my favorites is her charcoal drawing of the girl emerging from water, titled “Breath,” which she says “symbolizes the need to breathe and live life the way you want to live.” Her artwork shows the great amount of passion she has for drawing, so the first question I asked her was about when the passion for art really took her over.
“So I guess high school is when I really was feeling passionate about art, because back in grade school, in middle school, all the teachers were giving me bullshit projects. ‘Take a ruler, draw some lines, oh you made a building.’ I don’t want to do that. I hated it because I get 100s on all of them, [while] I felt like I was not doing any work but I was doing well, so it was annoying. But in high school I got challenged by teachers. So in 9th grade I had my first teacher, Mr. Pragenburg. He was an interesting guy, but he really showed me the ropes and everything about what to do, and that’s when I started feeling like ‘Oh wow! I feel like I can start doing this as a career choice. And then I met my teacher from 10th through 12th grade. His name is Mr. Strand. He really made me feel passionate about art by just looking at his [art], watching how much fun he had doing it, and seeing all the portrait work he has done.”
Since Sabrina Brody is musically and artistically talented, one would think that she would be an art major, yet that is not the case. “Weirdly enough, everyone thought I was going to be a music major, and I kind of was just like ‘curveball!’ no I would rather just go into engineering (electrical) and do music on the side,” she said. I had to ask her then about the pressure she felt by being in such a male-dominated field.
“I try to be as true to myself, but you know sometimes you do have to toughen up because there are a lot of guys; you’re kind of singled out, and all the girls are scattered across the [class]room. It is one of those things that has just been dominated by males for so long that now all of sudden women are just trying to get in, and it’s weird, it feels weird, but at least it is getting better.”
“So what made you decide to be an engineer then?”
“My dad does a lot of technological things, he used to be behind the scenes doing all the technology, and I thought that was interesting. So I went ‘Hmm, what is kind of like that?’, but is even more in depth. And so engineering is what I found.”
Our conversation then geared towards travel. Sabrina described how she’s been to Italy and hopes one day she can go back again. As of now though, she is just focusing on finishing the semester on a strong point.