Ashleigh Adkins is a senior graphic design major from Hamlin, West Virginia who has artwork in the senior capstone exhibit at the Marshall University Visual Arts Center.

Adkins first started practicing art at a young age.

“When I was ten, the art teacher handed me my very first sketchbook,” Adkins said. “I just used it for doodling, but throughout middle school, the art teacher continued to give me some of his personal art supplies and sketchbooks to let me experiment with different media and have something to practice with at home.”

Her family and teacher saw her talent and continued to encourage her to keep practicing and improving.

“Now I am creating work I never thought I would be able to, including my capstone work. Sometimes I still look back through my sketchbooks from middle school and am unable to believe how far I have come,” Adkins said.

Her capstone, “Natural Connections,” started with her love for Native American culture and their animal totems. She first started becoming interested in the culture during elementary school and was intrigued by dream catchers and totem poles and found herself wanting to know more, while also finding a deeper meaning.

“I wanted to know what each one meant. Why did they make them? Do we still have connections to these totems today? Going forward with these questions in mind, I began to research the most common totems to get a general idea of what they really were and expanded from there,” Adkins said.

She explained that most people pick an animal like a cat or dog when thinking about a spirit animal or animal totem. Instead, they pick the person through dreams, media, seeing them in person, etc. The animal totems that become that person represent different personality traits and teach important life lessons along the way, but someone must be willing to listen for them to appear. As a result, she has discovered two of her own spirit animals — the snow leopard and the fox.

Her capstone consisted of twelve 25x 9.5 white charcoal and colored pencil on black paper drawings of animals’ eyes, a book containing her research with approximately 70 animal totem sketches, and a handmade hula hoop size dream catcher. Each larger drawing took a minimum of 15 hours to complete, not including going back weeks later to touch up pieces.

“My overall goal was to connect the viewers to the creatures I was depicting and open their eyes to the beauty and natural forces that surround them and I believe that I was successful,” Adkins said.

Adkins plans to continue working as the marketing & design assistant for Better Foods, Inc. in Nitro after graduating and possibly attend graduate school once she finds one that fits her.

“I will definitely miss being a part of the art school and having class in the Visual Arts Center. My favorite part has probably been getting to be a student assistant for the School of Art & Design,” she said.

Adkins’s work can be seen at the Charles W. and Norma C. Carroll Gallery in the Visual Arts Center in Pullman Square. The gallery hours are Monday through Friday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Krislyn Holden can be contacted at [email protected].