Junior Kelsey Edwards is an artist, musician, singer, and full-time student, with AP English 11, AP United States History, astronomy, and Art III on her plate for this semester.

She has only taken three art classes, all at Tunstall. The subject matter she enjoys drawing the most are African people and tribal things, along with people from different cultures. “I’m working on this around the world collection right now.” This collection consists of an African woman with a complete black background, and she has begun working on the next work, which is Russian nomadic people migrating, with the ground completely black. One whole section is black in each picture. “[It represents] darkness in the world that isn’t really captured very often.”

She gets her inspiration for her drawings from diversity in people and cultures, classical music, and being outside, but the biggest one is people from different countries. She will see a picture on the internet or in a book and get a basis from that and adds what she wants to it. As for people, da Vinci, Chopin, and Van Gough are big inspirations to her, too. However, she doesn’t try to model their styles. “I’m not on their level.”

Not only does she have a lot of inspirations, she also has a few mentors. Jody Rising plays guitar, and is a very musical person, too, and is Edwards’s musical mentor. Tommy “Chicken” Walton was her youth pastor in middle school. “We meet at Starbucks on a regular basis.” Other mentors are Jason Farmer, her youth pastor, Randall Waller, her former youth group pastor who still gives her spiritual guidance, and her dad.

She is not just an artist; she is a musician, too. She has been playing guitar for the past five months and playing piano off and on since the age of five. She uses Google to teach herself guitar and does not take formal lessons.

Edwards is also very involved in her church, Blessed Hope. Her father is the pastor and she is involved in the youth group, too. One of her favorite things about youth group is the youth band, which consists of her and another person, Hunter Applegate. They both play guitar and Edwards sings.

Her hobbies range from singing at church, four days a week, to painting and drawing. As for the future, she is looking at colleges in Maine and her dream job is to become a high school art teacher. “Anything in the art or music field is ideal.”