Beth Shambo heard the term “scenic designer” for the first time as a senior in high school with one credit (as a charge artist) already under her belt. Beth has been an artist for as long as she can remember, and her childhood passion for the arts has never gone away. Two very influential women in Beth’s life, her mother and her high school art teacher, encouraged her to use her art as a means to experiment, to explore, to wonder, to see possibility, to look beyond intended use/meaning, to make mistakes and to learn from them. Beth’s Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature allowed her to develop the skills to dissect and question not only literature, but also the world around her, all while embracing her urge to become a crazy red string pegboard person. This analytical background taught her what it meant for art to have meaning in addition to how to imbue meaning into her own art. For Beth, art is not just a hobby or casual interest — is it a process of learning, experimenting, mistake-making, problem solving, expressing emotions, and an opportunity to engage with others and tell a story. While it is uncertain whether or not life imitates art or art imitates life, Beth believes that both life and art are a reflection of choice and experience — of trial and error. In 2018, she inadvertently found herself sitting in Andy Fitch’s graduate level scene painting class with a Bachelor’s in English Literature and halfway through a Master’s in Secondary English Language Arts Education when she realized how much she missed creating art and how important it is to her as a person. For the first time since senior year of high school, Beth heard the term “scenic designer” again but in a college class, and this time she learned that it was not only a real profession and degree program, but it would finally enable her to combine her artistic passion with her skills and appreciation for literature