I am an 18-year-old aspiring clothes designer. I dye my hair with henna, go to high school, work part time at a Turkish restaurant and search for clothe scraps in reduced price baskets. I spend my days cutting, sewing, patterning clothe into the shapes I think it was made to fold into.

Last summer, under the heat of Providence, I sat among wooden easels, next to giant windows and drew, charcoaled and painted for hours in the white colored rooms of Rhode Island School of Design after receiving a full scholarship to attend their pre-college program.

Most days, I left my classes covered in black stains from the charcoal and with aching fingers that had been holding dark green Sanfords for hours. I left feeling excited, frustrated, filled with criticism, but mostly I felt satisfied. Drawing is what I struggle with in art; my fingers don't glide through white paper with the same precision and instinct as the way they do with a pair of scissors cutting through cloth. But I was at RISD to learn and struggle, and I had never felt so inspired except in one other period of my life. And that had happened years ago in a small tailor shop in Turkey.

I was born in a southern Turkish city just above the eastern Mediterranean. Adana is where the oranges grow, where my father still lives and my grandfather used to work a tailor shop. I was raised among the lemon trees of this city running up and down the wooden stairs of that famous tailor shop. In that dark, dust-smelling store, I came to know the smell and touch of fabrics, the way a measuring tape glides over a cloth, and the whiteness of the chalk that traces the pattern.

It was in that tailor shop, holding iron scissors too big for my hand and cutting unevenly through a piece of cloth that I felt the most inspired.

Many years have passed since then, and now I am an eighteen year old aspiring clothes designer living in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I have been designing clothes now for two years, yet I have been expressing myself artistically since I could hold a crayon. In the third year of high school I started interning with a local designer, learning the intricacies of sewing, drawing sketches and working with patterns. After my internship, I started marketing the clothes I had been putting together through my website. My priority is not to make money, instead it is to keep busy and disciplined and to grow as an artist.

I am currently finishing high school and getting ready to attend college. I have just spend an amazing summer attending a pre-college art program at both Rhode Island School of Design and Parsons. Those eight weeks at both RISD and Parson gave me focus, inspiration and intensity. These programs allowed me to challenge myself and be exposed to new ideas as I develop as a designer.

- Su Beyazit