Name: Lydia Abernathy
Age: 18
School: Santa Fe Preparatory School
SITE Program: Young Curators

Who she is:

My start in the Young Curators program was somewhat non-traditional. I only arrived in Santa Fe two years ago from Mckinney, Texas for the start of my junior year. I had been to Taos a few times to ski during the winter months, but generally I had never been to New Mexico. So after a series of events, my mother and I ended up moving to Santa Fe and fell in love. My mother and I are artists, so it felt like a natural transition to come to one of the biggest art capitols in the country. I fell in love with all of the art galleries and of course, SITE Santa Fe. I had never actually been to a museum dedicated to installations and the like; I’d only really been opened up to traditional gallery settings. So I spent my first year here under the radar, trying to make friends and keep up with the rigorous coursework at Prep. I integrated quickly and was pretty well-received at school but my artist side kind of dwindled under all the pressure of academics/college/social stuff so I wasn’t able to create as much as I would’ve liked.

So the fall semester of my senior year, I was lucky enough to go to a semester program completely dedicated to creating art in California. When I got back, full of creative energy, I wanted an outlet that would allow me to help create art and possibly create a show dedicated to something. Prep has a program called the TAP program which basically encourages students to help the community in any way which pleases them. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to be apart of something where there were people who were like-minded. So right after Christmas break, I showed up at the first Young Curators meeting, not really sure of what to expect, and the rest is history. I had never done any kind of curating (at least to this extent) and immediately fell in love with the close knit group of creative students, the Young Curators.

What’s next for Lydia:

After the 2013 school year I will be attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I tentatively plan on going into illustration or painting, but for my freshman year I want to focus on expanding my horizons as an artist and find my own ‘style’ of artwork. My hope is to one day become a ‘full-fledged artist’ or a story illustrator for web design, magazines or other such media outlets.