Garvin Santiago’s journey as a youth animator at Artists For Humanity

As I walk onto the third floor of the Artists For Humanity building, I find a plethora of teens working diligently on work ranging from animation to painting. While the space was packed, it was filled with nothing but creativity and serenity. But I’m here for a purpose. After a quick admiration, I find my interviewee and we begin to walk down to the first floor to get ready. Art in general is something that brings all types of people together. Art itself is pure emotions, whether they are negative or positive. As a society, we need more art to hopefully bring more happiness into our daily lives. 

Garvin Santiago is a 16-year-old Latino animator for Artist For Humanity. Born and raised in Boston, he lives in Jamaica Plain and attends Snowden International, where he is heading into his senior year. Santiago describes himself as a chill person. He comes into the office every day with a big smile and says “hi” to everyone that comes in. Having been in places where he felt unwelcome and unwanted, he wants to make sure that no one else has to go through that. 

Santiago joined Artist For Humanity two years ago and started working with animation about a year ago. When he was younger, he loved watching animation on TV and developed a passion for it. One of Santiago’s favorite parts of animation is seeing how you can improve over time. When he first joined the team, it was a struggle, but over time he got the hang of it, and it became like second nature. “it was definitely challenging. But I think that’s the coolest part about doing art is that there’s always a challenge.” Santiago is constantly getting inspiration from other artists, keeping his artistic side flourishing with new ideas. “I would kind of view art online and be like, I kind of like that art, I kind of want to change [my art] into that style.”

Santiago’s most memorable project was an animation for City Hall. The assignment was to draw out a poem that they were provided. The whole point of it was to get an idea of what the reader was seeing while reading the poem. While working in animation for about a year, Santiago has learned a bunch of new techniques and styles. “One of the things that I definitely realized is to not delete your old art.”  In this way he learned how to improve his drawing skills. Being able to look back at any old work and see what he did to get that final project was a big factor when it came to him improving his art to the best of his ability.

A lot of people disregard art when instead we should be valuing it a lot more. Art is not only made from emotions, it can cause emotions. That’s why people like Santiago who are in touch with their creativity are important. Santiago works hard to make art that he not only loves but enjoys making. “I think it’s one of the most beautiful things about art because when I view it, our art is like a dictionary, because the dictionary has many words. But art itself has many different meanings.”