Shailee Thakkar is originally from Gujarat, India, but emigrated to the United States in 2004 with her family. She grew up watching her father make yearly holiday cards and rangolis. She thought about pursuing the arts as a career, but eventually studied Biochemistry at the University of Texas at Austin. After graduating, she started working as a high school science teacher while continuing the family tradition of making holiday cards each year. She started taking art classes at ACC in 2017. Since she was still teaching, she only took summer or weekend classes. She taught herself some basic printmaking by watching some online videos and got interested in printmaking in 2019. After deciding to take a break from teaching in a school, she enrolled at ACC as a full time art student. It has been an artistic adventure for her ever since. She continued learning more about printmaking, digital art and even some ceramics. Taking a variety of classes has given her many opportunities to express her thoughts with the use of various media.
Although she hasn’t been able to select her favorite medium yet, she continues to return to her sketchbook from her Drawing I and II classes for the content of her portfolio since it contains a lot of subjects she enjoys working with. With the help of her design professor Jill Thrasher, she was able to start interning at Slugfest Printmaking studio, where she is working on her portfolio. Additionally, another professor Shawn Camp put her in contact with the ICOSA collective. She has been working with the members of ICOSA as well. It is important to her that she learn the administrative, logistical and some of the manual work that goes into putting together an exhibition and she has been able to learn that while with ICOSA.
In September 2021, she was able to showcase some of her prints in her very first group exhibition. She showed at another gallery a few months later with the members of Slugfest as a part of a print exchange. This semester, she is working with Peter Bonfitto and Thomas Hilton for The Art Galleries at ACC. It has been an extremely rewarding experience taking classes from a variety of faculty members with different backgrounds and teaching styles. She looks forward to all her classes, even though there are assignments that have proved to be extremely difficult at times. At the end of the day, it is all a part of learning more about a field that she was already familiar with and always interested in pursuing. She hopes to apply for an MFA program with her completed portfolio.
Website: www.shaileethakkar.com
Instagram: _shaileethakkar
