‘More than anything, I want to see art around campus’
“Small progress is still PROGRESS. Keep going one step at a time.”
This motivational quote now hangs permanently in the Goddard Library, encouraging students as they pass by. The quote is part of a mural painted by Skye Donaldson ’26, MAT ’27, who received a 2025 Sara Bickman Music and Arts Summer Internship Award, which supports projects by students majoring in the Visual and Performing Arts.
Donaldson, a studio art major, called her project “Murals for Motivation.”
“It’s important to have art in a lot of spaces. More than anything, I want to see art around campus,” says Donaldson, who created similar uplifting art as a high schooler. “It’s nice to see how one of the smallest things can inspire others.”
Donaldson’s mural, on the second floor of the library near the Help Desk, depicts a Black student writing in a green notebook and wearing green headphones. There are splashes of vibrant colors in various rectangular shapes and a flurry of music symbols. It was important to her to paint something personal and deliberate. “I want other people who look like me to see a character in a painting who looks like them,” says Donaldson.
Donaldson is pursuing a Masters of Art in Teaching in the 4+1 Advanced Degree program and hopes to be a high school art teacher. “I’ll be equipped to help transform urban education alongside generations of Clark alumni,” she says.
Donaldson has always been moved by the power of art throughout millennia, learning in history classes about cave paintings that comprise some of the earliest visual references of humanity.
“Art represents empowerment for me. It’s been a part of human life for ages,” she says. “It’s an important way to express yourself, and movements of the past have been propelled through art. I see art as activism, as self-expression, as an emotional outlet.”
Donaldson also works with ceramics and film photography. At Clark, she has most enjoyed her capstone class with Studio Art Professor Toby Sisson and Senior Thesis with Photography Professor Stephen DiRado because the courses have encouraged students to reflect on the questions “What does art mean to you?” and “What do you create art about?”
“Mentors are the most important thing,” says Donaldson, who acknowledges that Sisson and DiRado have helped her explore more about herself.
