By Maya Ekladious & Evelyn Nguyen
“It’s fun, it’s brain stimulating, I could do it forever…it’s addicting in a way,” senior Madeleine Prado said.
Whether it be holding a paintbrush or putting pieces of fabric together to create a masterpiece, Prado, an award-winning artist and fashion designer, chases her childhood dream to pursue a career in art and fashion.
Prado’s love for art started on the kitchen table where her mother would catch her playing with watercolors and crayons. As her parents saw her love for art blossoming, her first creative pieces were on a roll of butcher paper and an easel.
Along with her natural curiosity for art, her older sister played a role in getting her to start her art journey.
“My sister was really good at sketching, and copying cartoons and I wanted to do whatever she was doing. So naturally, I was just copying all of her drawings and sketchings,” Prado said.
It wasn’t long before she discovered her passion for fashion as well, she began by sewing little clothing pieces as gifts, and little did she know that she would be winning fashion competitions later in her high school career.
“I started sewing my freshman year, it was the first time I touched a sewing machine and then now, four years later, I’m winning fashion competitions,” Prado said.
Prado was quickly recognized for her unique art style in her freshman-year art class where her teacher brought light to her art by including it in the creative gallery district show.
“My teacher thought that my art stood out when I was enrolled in Art 1, so she suggested we should put it in the district show,” Prado said. “It was a really proud moment for me and my family to see my art on the wall like with a bunch of other people’s”
However, that was just the beginning of Prado’s awards collection. A few months ago, Prado received her first award in fashion design and won first place in the Family, Career and Community Leaders of America fashion design contest. Moreover, Prado’s art was recently featured in the Laguna College of Art and Design high school showcase and she was nominated for the “Artist of the Year” award across Orange County.
“I really enjoyed the process of creating my award fashion design piece. I decided to do colorful wedding dresses because I thought that if I get married I want to have a colorful wedding dress,” Prado said. “Then it was about expanding on that and like really figuring out how to create a business which was a new experience for me.”
Although Prado plans to pursue her talent in college by majoring in fine arts, as she prepares to graduate high school and dive into the ‘real world’, she is worried about the infamous stereotype about artists, which unfortunately is often true.
“The stereotype for artists is that they’re always broke because they can’t find a job and that’s because the world today just doesn’t have much for traditional artists. In today’s world, more graphic designers are in demand rather than my traditional paintings,” Prado said.
While Prado sees the appeal in graphic design, she thinks that her traditional paintings and fashion are more authentic to her personality and she wants to keep her art alive through her tangible paintbrushes and fabrics.
