By Allie Perez

Interview with Nuha Mcdiarmid: 

Nuha McDiarmid has been nominated as artist of the month at Batavia High School. She’s a senior and has been doing art for as long as she could remember. After being artist of the month, she was overjoyed and was asked a series of questions:

Interviewer: How long have you been interested in art?

Nuha: “I’ve been drawing since I was about four, but I’ve been interested in clay and sculpting, and 3D art since about eighth grade. I started developing my skills in 3D art during my sophomore year.” 

Interviewer: So what got you into art in the first place?

Nuha: “I spent a lot of time alone as a kid because my parents were always in meetings, and they would have to bring me to the meetings so they would just kind of give me a pen and paper so I just kind of drew all the time.” 

Interviewer: Did you draw yourself some friends?

Nuha: “I drew imaginary friends when I was four. Her name was Kirfleen.”

Interviewer: Kirfleen? How do you spell that?

Nuha: “K-I-R-F-L-E-E-N. I used to draw pictures of her all the time, we have a whole album in my house.”

Interviewer: So would that piece be your most meaningful one? Or do you have another? 

Nuha: “The piece that means the most to me isn’t that good but it was one of the first busts I ever did. It was of my grandma and I put Arabic writing on her shoulders. It was made when I first started developing my skills and it meant a lot to me.”

Interviewer: What piece would you say took you the longest?

Nuha: “My last piece is called ‘Pageant Queen’ and it went off to the scholastic award nomination thing.I had to make a bust and I had to make hair out of deconstructed toys. So gluing it all together and making the bust and making the face. Doing the face and the bone structure was really hard.”

Interviewer: So overall, how long did it take you?

Nuha: “About a month and a half.”

Interviewer: So with all this, would you like to continue art after high school? 

Nuha: “I would hope to continue art but I wouldn’t make it my profession. I wanted to be an artist or an animator for a really long time but I just kind of shifted past that.”

Interviewer: Basically it’s a hobby now? 

Nuha: “A little more than a hobby but less than a life career.”