One Washburn student’s long-time hidden talent for art will be taking her to the east coast after graduating this May. Lauren Thimmesch will be graduating in less than a month with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with an emphasis in graphic design. But receiving the diploma is not only the beginning of a new journey, but the fruition of a journey she has been on since she was a kid. “I’ve always been kind of a quieter person, so art was, as a kid, something that I was just able to do and express myself through,” Thimmesch said. “I was always just in my room doodling and drawing and always kind of making bright, vibrant things as a kid, even though I was really quiet.”

Thimmesch said she spent her childhood and the majority of her high school years creating her own art, but it was not until she was a junior in high school that her talent was discovered. “When I was in high school, my parents didn’t really know I was in my room drawing like this, and my dad came in and he found all these typography drawings for people in my class of their names, and he found one, and he took it to a graphic design firm in Chicago that was working with his company, and they looked at it and they said, ‘Oh, you should bring her out here. She’s pretty good. We’d like to see her. She’d probably enjoy this industry,’” Thimmesch said. “So they took me out to Chicago and I saw it and I fell in love with graphic design, and that’s where I’ve been ever since.” Thimmesch has accepted a position at Boston University’s advertising department. “I want to work for an ad agency and design ads for them, so I’ll be moving to Boston in August and starting that next part of my life,” Thimmesch said. Thimmesch has completed two internships in college and will be undertaking another over the summer. And in addition to her BFA degree, she will be graduating with a minor in mass media. One aspect of graphic design that appeals to Thimmesch is its marketability. “I think that [graphic design] is a field that’s really needed, and every company needs a graphic designer to make their brand [and] image that’s catchy and appealing to the eye,” she said. “I love that kind of thing. I think that being able to create something that other people have in their head or may not be able to physically create themselves is something that’s really fun to do.”

Thimmesch’s art is on display on the first level of the Washburn Art Building. She said she has many favorite pieces, but if she had to pick one, it would be “Ecuador,” a graphic design piece created in Photoshop Illustrator. She said “Ecuador,” one of multiple similar works of art each titled after a different country, is her favorite because of the colors. “All of these [similar pieces] are about countries that have undergone environmental racism, and so this one in particular, in “Ecuador,” there was a Texas oil company taking oil out of the land and they didn’t do a very good job of cleaning it up, and so it destroyed everything around it and polluted the area,” Thimmesch explained. “Basically, it’s supposed to look like something very happy and appealing, but they have hidden symbols in them, and there are hidden clues in them that bring out a tragedy that happened in each country.” After graduating, Thimmesch said she hopes to sell the art exhibited in her senior art show. Adam Vlach, [email protected], is a senior English and mass media major