Chloe Weng

Hi my name is Chloe Weng and I attended Mountain View High School. I enrolled in Freestyle Academy in 2020 and I was in the class of 2022. I began taking an interest in art when I was about seven years old. Through weekly art classes, I started building up my foundation and my passion for art grew. My interests were always changing when I was younger, but they were all related to art. I first found myself loving jewelry and wanting to make my own pieces. I would spend hours every day placing tiny beads onto a string; I remember how proud I felt showing my parents the first bracelet I ever made. Through art, I learned how to be patient and learn from mistakes in order to find what felt right for me. Art allows me to let my creativity run wild and make my imagination tangible. I am grateful to have been a part of Freestyle and to have been able to apply my learning to my art and daily life. It was a fun and interesting experience to be in an environment filled with people who share similar interests and values to mine.

After two years at Freestyle, I can confidently say that I have learned numerous valuable skills at Freestyle Academy. I would be lying if I said these two years were a breeze; there were a number of times when I felt incredibly lost with all of the new material and applications I was being introduced to. However, as we were assigned more and more projects, I found myself becoming more comfortable with the software, and I was even able to use my knowledge to solve problems I would have considered impossible some time ago.

Being a student at Freestyle Academy from 2020-2022 have taught me skills, both technical and interpersonal, that I could not have obtained otherwise. Having only done traditional art up until coming to Freestyle, I was terrified and excited to try digital art. The concept was intimidating, but it was something I had always wanted to try. I worked with Photoshop primarily for my animations and Illustrator for some of my art and designs. I went from not knowing how to adjust pen pressure or how to properly use the pen tool, to creating minute-long animations. I also learned about other skills like editing audio or creating music in Pro Tools and writing lyrical essays or poems in my English class. Beyond the technical skills I learned, I also improved my collaboration skills as a large portion of projects encourage us to work together and discuss our ideas to receive and give feedback. I got to work with two of my closest friends to create a podcast episode about a topic we were all passionate about. I created my Senior Narrative with three of my peers; it required lots of communication and combined decision-making.

Freestyle provided me with the opportunity to learn so many things that I would never have been able to experience otherwise. It has exceeded my expectations and shaped the person I am today. I feel like I belong more at Freestyle than anywhere else and I am grateful for everything I have learned.