“Carmen Le is a very intelligent, kind dedicated young woman,” says one recommender. “She is [also] one of the hardest working students I’ve seen in years.” A graduate of Escondido High School, with a 4.11 GPA, Carmen was a 4 year member of the Tennis Team, a 3 year member of the Academic League, an AVID student, a member of CSF, the National Honor Society and the Art Club. She is also the first person in her family to attend college. Perhaps with that in mind, Carmen pursued academic subjects almost exclusively in school, yet she was drawn inexorably toward the art world. In middle school, inspired initially by the art of anime artist, Rumiko Takahashi: “I decided to draw,” says Carmen. “I researched how to draw anime characteristics—eyes, hairstyles, body proportions, clothes—in order to understand how I could continue to improve my drawings.” And she continued to draw at home until, in her senior year, she finally took an art class. “When I enrolled in Introduction to Art, I was able to work with new materials that I was not aware of, like charcoal drawing, Cubism a, and printmaking,” she says. “Carmen has since decided to attend San Diego State University where she will pursue a Bachelor of Arts with an emphasis in Multimedia and Photography. “I want to have a career as an animator,” she says. “[Because] art allows me to use my creative mind.”

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