by Brad Horton ’15
Tyler Delgado ’15 may be a leading member of the St. Ignatius High School Crew Team, but he also has an extraordinary talent for design and photography. Tyler began his artistic career at St. Ignatius with the standard Drawing Class, and he quickly showed promise. “I obviously got close with Mr. Stewart, and he referred me to Miss Burrows, who is the head of the fine arts department” Tyler said. He then became involved in A.I.R. (Artists In Residence), which meets once week to work on art projects after school. Being involved in A.I.R. became a stepping stone into A.P. Studio Art “which is an A.P. course where each semester you have to submit a twelve piece portfolio. Then by the end of your senior year you’ll have a twenty-four piece portfolio to submit to the College Board. The portfolio kind of takes the place of your standard A.P. exam for any class you usually have.”
Tyler’s artistic talent has been recognized through the reception of a Silver Key from the Scholastic Art and Writing Contest. Tyler is currently working on the concentration aspect of his artistic portfolio, which takes simple design elements featured in the previous semester’s breathe portfolio and improves upon them. “So right now I’m combining a little bit of digital media and photography. I’ll take a regular photograph, be it landscape or portrait or something like that, and then add in a digital design element that’s sort of surprising. It adds more of a message to the photograph. One I just did was picture up by the old Coast Guard Station, just the frozen lakefront and everything. Then I replaced the sky with some abstract galaxy I made in Photoshop, stuff like that.”
According to Tyler, the only bad thing about being an artist is dealing with deadlines. He really enjoys the freedom art offers to express a personal element and help others understand that personal element. “You just put [an idea] on paper or put it in a photograph. Its meaning is kind of specific to you, and it’s your job to make sure other people understand that meaning. You can put yourself, your persona, and your motto to appease and represent you.”
Tyler began participating on the Crew team freshmen year, and has since risen to the positions of senior leader and equipment manager. He has won multiple awards for the races he has participated in.
Tyler said the worst thing about Crew is the amount of time it takes up and early morning practices. However, he has the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. “I’ve made out a lot of good connections with people and the relationships. I’ve just met a lot of good people over the course of being on the team and everything. And it’s an experience I wouldn’t really trade for anything. I learned a lot about myself and other people through it.”
Time management is the most difficult thing about being a hybrid according to Tyler. He wakes up at four-thirty in the morning in the offseason for workouts, and, when the season picks up, Tyler has less time for homework, and especially art, due to weekend regattas. He believes that the best thing about being a hybrid is a being able to combine one’s passions. “But I think the best thing about [being a hybrid] is at times it’s easy to combine the love of both art and crew into the same thing. I’m into photography a lot, so it’s easy for me to take decent photographs. I try to capture what I love about the sport in a drawing, a painting, or something like that.”
To fellow students who consider becoming a hybrid, Tyler says “Just don’t be afraid to push yourself. You’re going to obviously run into schedule conflicts. You’re going to be busy, but there’s no reason why you can’t sit down for a few hours, listen to some music, and draw, paint, or something. It’s not like you have to take a class to be an artist. The title doesn’t really come with taking a class. So it’s just about sitting down, picking up a brush or pencil, or going out and taking a camera. It’s just capturing whatever you think is beautiful: finding something you like and expressing yourself through it.”
