September’s artist of the month is junior Renee Tran, nominated by art teacher Mrs. Dana Kramer. Tran is capable of expressing herself in many forms of art, including traditional hand drawn art to digital art and graphic design. 
“I’m selecting Renee for Artist of the Month because her work was nominated over the summer,” Kramer said. “The work that she made last year as a sophomore was selected into the Laguna Festival of the Arts Art Show, which is a really big accomplishment.”
At the Laguna Festival of the Arts Art Show, Tran won second place in her age division. Tran’s work was also displayed at South Coast Plaza for another show, the Imagination Celebration, an art festival where student pieces from schools across Orange County are displayed and judged. These two accomplishments both exemplify Tran’s dedication to her graphic design pieces. 
“[Renee] is an extremely hard and dedicated worker, is always pushing herself to be a better artist, she’s always trying to make her work better and asking questions and getting critiqued for how she can improve her work and her ideas,” Kramer said. “She’s the kind of student who, whenever I say, ‘Oh we need a logo for this, or a graphic for this, and it’s like a voluntary thing, always volunteers because she’s always interested in making more work to better herself as an artist.”
Tran was first inspired to draw in her elementary school years. “It all started with those little coloring books you get as a kid,” Tran said. 
Tran has honed her artistic abilities beyond simple coloring and has expanded her horizons by learning new forms of art such as graphic design. “I think [I found] a lot of aspects of graphic design neat and I wanted to learn more about it. I thought it was really fun and [had] and enjoyable environment to learn in,” Tran said.
Tran makes her art unique by adding aspects of herself into her designs and drawings. “Like a lot of my work tends to reflect how I am. So far this year a lot of my work has been more modern, minimalistic stuff, and that’s kind of how I feel,” said Tran.
Tran is hopeful for a future in graphic design. “I would like to work in art someday, but given the current stigma around it, I’m not sure if I will,” said Tran. “I want to work in computer graphics, doing art for video games.
Tran appreciates the personal growth she has experienced from art and graphic design. “Through art I find a lot of aspects of myself through making stories,” Tran said. “I put a lot of ‘me’ into my own stories, so that helps me learn about myself and grow as a person.”