Ask Euladora Rose what she loves most about making art, and she will tell you it is the very beginning. Before the first mark is made, before materials are chosen, before anything exists at all.
“Turning a thought into a form,” she says. “Deciding how you’re going to do it. That’s my favorite part.”
For a high schooler who is already a Member Artist at the Hopkins Center for the Arts, a juried exhibition finalist, and a recent volunteer art teacher in Morocco, that sense of wonder has not faded. If anything, it drives everything else.
Euladora grew up moving between schools, drawing in her free time, and is now going to be a full-time PSEO student at the University of Minnesota. What started as a love of sketching cats evolved into sculpture, mixed media, oil pastel, painting, and wood carving. She does not confine herself to one style and never plans to.
“People find value in art being different and not confined to a niche,” she says.
That openness extends to the people who encounter her work. For Euladora, a finished piece is never entirely finished. It becomes something new depending on who is standing in front of it.
“Everyone has a different interpretation of an art piece,” she says. “When something is ambiguous, it makes people resonate and think about it differently. Even if you have an idea of what it means when you’re starting a piece, you discover new meanings. It gives another opportunity for interpretation.”
It is a generous way to think about creativity — one that leaves room for the viewer to bring something of their own.
Her recent sculpture, Love, captures that spirit. Euladora carved a human heart from wood, shaped vessels from clay, and cut a handwritten love letter into the shape of butterflies. Deep red and white. Simplistically powerful.
“I felt a responsibility to do love justice,” she says. “How the words of love blossom from a much deeper experience.”
Nature serves as her consistent source of inspiration: landscapes, trees, the nooks and crannies most people walk past without noticing. Animals, too. Growing up, she found it easier to befriend animals than with people her own age. “I had a harder time making new friends,” she says, “but animals I could connect to easily.” That feeling has continuously found its way into her work. A recent series in her AP Art class explored the human experience through insects.
Her oil pastel of Mount Fuji — the piece selected for Arts North International at the Hopkins Center out of more than 1,100 entries from across the country and world — came from a trip she took with her mother. Her favorite memory from that climb was not the view from the top. It was sliding back down.
Euladora is also learning to release something that once held her back: perfectionism. “As I discover more freedom as an artist, I’ve been letting go of that view,” she says. “It really limits you. The value of the art isn’t that it looks real, it’s that somebody made it.”
This summer, she heads to the Rhode Island School of Design on a scholarship, where architecture is the main focus — a field where, as she put it, you get to be a problem solver and artist simultaneously.
Euladora Rose is a teenager from the north metro who sees the world a little differently (and more captivating) than most. And has the art to prove it.
“Every piece I do says something about me,” she says.
Take a look. You may find a different meaning that you resonate with, too.
See more of Euladora's work at euladora.com.