Personal Statement

First and foremost, I would like to explain my gratitude for the opportunity to apply for the product design internship with Louie Gong and his Eighth Generation company. I feel that Mr. Gong's objective of integrating popular culture and traditional Coast Salish art, as an instrument to raise awareness of contemporary Native social issues, runs parallel to the logic behind merging my artistic talents, culture, and education.

I'm currently majoring in a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Design (ID) at Western Washington University (WWU). Industrial designers apply the art of dealing with the design problems of manufactured products such as cars, housewares, furniture, sneakers and beyond. As an ID major, I am trained to understand

I have an emotional connection with the art I produce because it is my way of expressing my cultural identity and social issues. I felt that earning this degree would help me expand my cultural arts and teaching’s into new mediums, thus expanding its audience.

One of the cultural customs that I have been incorporating in my design approach is sustainability. Industrial design is a profession in producing products for the masses. This contradicts the traditional custom of "living with the land and not against it", as a result, I have an inherent obligation to influence the industrial world to embrace these important teachings of preservation. There are environmental benefits to designing a product that requires using fewer production processes and recyclable material.

For the past couple of years, I have devoted long hours of concentrated effort to coordinating successful product designs. I can take a product idea and lead that into research, of the current market and demands, to develop the products unique function and purpose. This allows me to understand the products functional limitations and how to work around them. Consequently, I can create a successful project outline, turn concept sketches into final drawings, and then the groundwork for successful manufacturing, both time- and

I turn the renderings into a detailed part drawing that would display the products dimensions and assembly. Then, I work on those details to create a 3 dimensional (3D) representation using a Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software program, such as CATIA v5 or SolidWorks, to help me understand the products stresses and strains related to how it will be assembled. Once I have created a successful 3D model I can use Luxion KeyShot to get a realistic digital representation of how the project will look, with its assigned materials, before a physical prototype is made.

I could create a prototype by hand using polyurethane foam, wood, aluminum and other materials, or I can use the CAD file to print a plastic model using a 3D printer. The prototype allows me to explore the functional aspect of the design and decide if I need to repeat any of the design processes.

This internship would give me the hands-on experience, outside of the classroom, of collaborating with artists, Eighth Generation staff and manufacturers, so that I can follow a project past the prototype model into distribution. I believe that I have a lot to learn from Mr. Gong and his ability to spread: "strong statements about identity" effectively. I could utilize that knowledge in my design