Photo by Trip Burns.
As a senior in high school in Zeeland, Mich., Grace MacMaster entered a program at Careerline Tech Center, allowing her to attend a graphic-design and visual communications class for half the school day. There, she learned how to successfully communicate through graphic design.
In 2011, MacMaster entered a nationwide contest called Doodle 4 Google, where Google provides a theme with which grade-school contestants build a Google logo design. The theme that year was "What I Would Like to Do Someday," and MacMaster focused her design around seeing the Seven Wonders of the World. She placed in the top 40 regional finalists out of about 107,000 entries, and her work, along with those of the other finalists, was displayed at the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
The Ontario, Canada, native now attends Belhaven University and plans to graduate with a graphic-design degree in December. But graphic design is not her first passion. MacMaster, now 20, initially enrolled at Belhaven as a violin performance major, which she continued with only for one semester.
"I didn't want music to become a chore," she says. "I found that I want to be able to play the music because I love it, not for a grade."
When MacMaster made the transition between majors, she was also considering what she would need to be successful in life.
"I thought that (a career in) graphic design would allow me to be able to do music because I enjoy it, instead of the stress of having to make my entire living off it," she says. "With what I hope to do with music, I don't know if I need to (major in it)."
Besides, the classical style of playing that Belhaven focuses on doesn't exactly mesh with what MacMaster does. When she was 9 years old, she started playing the fiddle and taking classical lessons.
"I always knew that I wanted to focus on the Cape Breton fiddling style," she says. Her grandfather, Alexander H. MacMaster, was from Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, Canada. "They have a really strong musical culture there that's very distinct."
When MacMaster came to Jackson for college, she didn't think she'd find outlets for fiddling. While here, however, she has played at Fenian's Pub several times, and she performed at CelticFest in 2013.
MacMaster hasn't decided what she'll do or where she'll go after graduation, but she is considering doing freelance design work or finding an agency to work with.
"I have a real interest in illustration and combining it with design, so (I would like) to develop that further," MacMaster says. She already does a lot of illustration, and often adds hand-drawn elements to her digital work.
She also has hopes of releasing an album of fiddle music.
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