By Megan Bratton

Junior Nick Stover said he first applied to KU’s art program because his high school teachers recommended Kutztown’s respected communication design department. He is continuing his love for art and has been a featured artist in the McFarland Student Union building.
His current project that is being featured was created for his Illustration course. The project was to illustrate a person and passenger who are traveling on a voyage.
“I decided to depict a sitter on the voyage through life that is embracing infinite intelligence,” Stover said. “The digital painting combines a photorealistic and a painterly style to show the struggle between achieving infinite intelligence and the imperfections of mankind.”

Stover said that he first started to enjoy art when he was in elementary school. He became active in it and continued to take art classes throughout high school. He is a communication design major with concentrations in graphic design and illustration.
The communication design program pushes students by assigning challenging projects and setting deadlines. Stover said his favorite professor is Rick Salafia.
“His class was my very first class I had here,” he said. “His immense knowledge of art, design and conceptual thinking is what sparked my passion for design.”
Though Stover is enjoying his artwork during college, he continues to look into the future. After he graduates, he plans to move to New York City to search for a career in graphic design.
“I would ultimately like to work in a small design studio,” he said.
Art professors provide students with a wide variety of projects to assure that each student is gaining a broad education, as well as practicing their preferred skills. Stover said that he tries to make conceptual design work that is specific to who he is designing for.
“I have been enjoying using experimental techniques in my design to create meaningful and unique pieces,” he said.
To gain professional experience, Stover is a monitor in the print lab in Sharadin Art Building. He is also the assistant for the communication design department. Stover became an art major so that he could wake up every day and express his creativity.
“We get to use art and design to solve problems, which is exciting to me,” he said.
While he loves his major, he finds it stressful at times because there is always work to do.
“It is time consuming, but I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else with my life,” said Stover.
His favorite project is the conceptually illustrated book that he created for Ralph Waldo Emerson’s, “Nature.”
“I am a huge Emerson fan, and I enjoyed depicting his text with visuals. It [the book] included a lot of research and experimentation, which I love about the design process,” said Stover.
For younger students interested in an art major, Stover said to work hard, find inspiration in everything, make meaningful work and find a mentor to learn from.