Travel Through Time With Tai

Travel Through Time With Tai by Hannah bernstein

A little girl travels across the world with her family to visit art museums. At a young age, how are you supposed to know what you like? You like what your parents teach you to like. Tai Tworek, now 14, loves art. "When I was growing up, I was forced to look at art," Tworek said. "So I just developed a love of art from that and I have always been drawing since I was little." This is the first time Tai was pictured outside of the Centre Georges Pompidou, in Paris, in 2007. She returned back to Paris in 2013, and believes that it is one of the coolest places she has traveled to.

Tworek has advanced her art skills over the past years. To improve, she has taken art classes at the Ann Arbor Art Center but she also has spent a good portion of her summers at Interlochen Center for the Arts. For the past 5 years, Tworek majored in visual arts and creative writing. Interlochen has provided her with challenging courses she could not take through her school curriculum.

Experiences at Camp

"I love Interlochen so much, it is definitely a big part of who I am today," Tworek said. "When you go to Interlochen, it is a world renowned camp and there are many people from different parts of the world." A few years ago, her bunkmate was from Israel. Because of Interlochen, Tworek has friends from all over the country. She has learned a lot about herself, and how to respect other people’s belongings. Living in a cabin with 16 girls for 4 weeks can be really challenging for some, and Tworek has learned to respect others people cultures and acknowledge other people's differences because of the close proximity. "The teachers there are phenomenal and I learn so much from the time right before I go to camp. If you look at my artwork [before camp] and you look at the artwork I do when I get back from camp, I improve so much."

For the past years, Tworek has studied in two different majors. This year, she plans to attend a six-week session at Interlochen for visual arts only. She has put together a portfolio as an audition for a program that is called Citizens Artistry. In this program, Tworek hopes to be going to Traverse City, where she will be painting murals and helping out with other aspects of the community. Tworek spent 6 months on her portfolio and the two drawings above were included. The drawing of the hands took very long to make because of the complexity of every different position. "When I was doing my hand drawing, I was looking at my own hands and I was really fascinated by the way you can move your hands," Tworek said. "I just thought it was really cool how you would position your hands in different places, and they would turn into totally different new forms. I thought it would be interesting to capture the beauties of the forms."

Favorite Memory from Camp

"Going there for 6 years, I have created so many memories," Tworek said. "This past summer, each week you have cabin night with your cabin which is bonding to get to know your cabin mates." For cabin night [one year], we went camping with a cabin who we were really close with and we set up the tents in this big field right by this lake. It was Fourth of July so we stayed up and watched the fireworks and stayed up past everyone else and after we made these things called brown bears. Brown bears are these things where you take dough and you roast it in the fire and coat it in cinnamon sugar. It’s really, really good. In the middle of the night when we were camping, the sprinklers turned on and our counselors forgot to tell maintenance to turn them off. I was the first person in my tent to wake up at night to it and I was really scared. Then our counselors woke us all up and we had to walk back to division at 3 am. It was really eerie because we had to walk back in through the junior girls division and it was really creepy, so calm and still and that was definitely one of my favorite memories."

Created By

Hannah Bernstein

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