- Hello and welcome to Dreamers and Makers.

I'm Paula Wallace, president and founder of scad, the University for Creative Careers.

I created this series to showcase the extraordinary talent of SCAD alumni.

Each of the artists you're about to meet came to SCAD as a dreamer, a believer, a creator, striving for a career in the arts.

There's simply nothing quite like the joy creative professionals experience when they realize these dreams.

Although all SCAD artists are highly accomplished, no to follow the same path to success as the stories you're about to see will illustrate.

I'd like to introduce you to Mojo Reed, an artist in Miami whose work conveys hope with every brush.

Stroke Mojo partners with huge global brands to tell visual stories of inclusion and representation.

He creates a sense of community that can inspire us all.

- Representation is so important.

I saw at the very beginning in comic books, I felt that it was my responsibility to not put any more negative energy out into the world.

My name is Mojo and I'm a contemporary artist, fine artist and public fine artist.

I grew up drawing all the time.

I'm the kid drawing on the back of my homework.

I would just draw from comic books and things like that.

As it went forward, I took a liking to comic books and storytelling and cartoons and video games and stuff.

Storytelling with my family was definitely the genesis for my art career.

Growing up in St. Louis, we would have these long nights talking about stories and going through pictures.

When I went back to school, I think I was like 22.

I was like, well, if I'm gonna just take a gamble on myself, I think it'll be going back to school for something I really wanna do, which was art comic books.

That was a way to escape reality a little bit.

During that time, I didn't realize it, but there wasn't a lot of superheroes that looked like me.

It really taught me the importance of storytelling and the responsibility of storytelling.

Also, being able to create my own lens to say, if I'm going to create something now I'm gonna share you my lens.

If I were to make a hero or anybody, I'm gonna use all types of people.

I had this great opportunity to have a artist residency going to Ghana, 34-year-old black man.

First time ever going out to country, going to Ghana was like mind blowing to me.

I realized very quickly that the life that I live right now may not have been my choice, and to actually in 2021 walked through a slave castle.

There's a huge responsibility that has to be upheld when you are telling someone else's story, and I take that responsibility very seriously.

SCAD came into my life in a very defining moment right around the time that I was like applying to schools.

My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.

I remember coming home after the diagnosis and being honest like, Hey mom, like I think I might just take a break.

Like I'll take a break and just stay here.

She said, absolutely not.

You're gonna take your ass to SCAD and I'm gonna be all right.

You know, like I'm gonna see you graduate because of her.

Like that's why I went to scad.

My mom was able to see me graduate.

She also was sitting next to me when I was awarded the 2021 Alumni Ambassador Award.

Every time I do something, she reposting it like, that's my son.

So if she still do that, that never gets old.

As an alumni, I still had the support of scad.

When people talk about their school, some people don't refer to the school they went to.

For me, I, I can't wait to say yeah, I went to scad.

- My name is Alejandra Estefania and I am a contemporary artist and I'm Mojo's fiance.

You know, one of my favorite things about being an artist is learning the rules just so I can break 'em.

I've watched him do that.

He's making his own lane and I think that's a powerful thing.

- Overtown is one of my favorite paintings to date.

There are six boys that are smiling and hugging and embracing each other.

This moment in their life, having fun with their friends was all they were really caring about.

The palette that I've created is ultimately just like the last colors I had after messing up all my other colors.

So I started to just make my skin tones and do all of my paintings out from this palette.

I felt like I needed to like master this one First I realized that my palette did not have to change in order to paint a black man or a white man, the DNA of the paint and the DNA of each human is all connected.

So when George Floyd was murdered, I reposted Overtown in the heat of all of that negative stuff on social media.

Overtown means the most to me because that's the representation I wanna see.

That's the type of responsibility I wanna see when or showing people that look like me, period.

That's ultimately how I met Jessica Goldman and her team.

- My name is Jessica Goldman Srebnick.

I'm the CEO of Goldman Global Arts.

Social media has become a very important tool for artists.

I happened upon this artist named Mojo and this image of six beautiful young black boys with the most incredible expression of joy.

I was so moved by this piece that I said to myself, this is what the world needs to feel like.

- They said, Hey, we want you to come in, do two murals and do what you want to do.

The first mural is of my son and that's called King's Highway.

One highway makes me think of like a journey, the journey for us to be in each other's life.

So King's Highway one is important because that's the first of many paintings I'm gonna do of him.

The second mural is of Jessica Goldman's grandmother-in-Law, getting on a boat to come from Cuba to Miami.

I'm just excited to put it out to have people that are in the community come up and embrace it from different cultures and races.

Like that's when you know that color palette is all connected.

We all got the same story.

It's just different people, different lenses.

My name is Anthony Mojo, Reed ii, and I'm a dreamer and a maker.

- Our next artist is Cavanagh Baker, a fashion designer based in Nashville.

Kavanaugh has worked with some of country music's biggest names, including Lauren Elena, Marin Morris, and Kelsey Ballerini her secret to success.

Be ready to seize the moment when you least expect it.

- I do consider myself a dreamer because I can't keep myself from visualizing something that I want to happen.

Whether it's creative business life, I always am thinking about the next steps.

I am Cavanagh Baker.

I am a luxury women's wear designer in Nashville, Tennessee.

I ended up in Nashville because I was in Boston designing for Reebok and I wanted to start my own business.

My mindset behind Nashville was I could work in the country music industry.

I would describe the Cavanagh Baker brand is very loud, very in your face, very glam, very bright, but at the same time, rock and roll.

So soki, crystals, the sequence, the designs.

It's very much my personality.

If you can walk into a room and turn heads without saying a word, that's my clothing.

The Ka baker brand is elevating women and making women feel empowered and confident and beautiful and sexy.

I was just very intrigued by fashion At such a young age.

I always just saw my mother like flawlessly put together 24 7.

I would always play dress up in her clothes and so telling my mother I wanted to be in fashion and I wanted my own clothing line was not an issue.

My father, on the other hand, was not so much inclined.

We started doing research and found scad.

I didn't even apply anywhere else.

I kind of told my dad that SCAD was the only option where I wasn't going to school and he was like, alright, we'll give it a shot.

I had never taken a drawing class in my life.

I was so intimidated.

I was scared 'cause I just didn't know what I was doing.

I think that also kind of like jumpstart me on like working really hard 'cause I felt like I needed to catch up with other students.

But it was all working towards the SCAD fashion show.

I knew when I got there my freshman year that if you made the SCAD fashion show you were gonna be successful 'cause it was the best of the best.

Got into the show, it was great.

All of these fabulous fashion editors and industry professionals sitting on one side and straight across the runway was my family from Alabama.

So I remember my dad being very, very happy with me being at scad.

When I first moved to Nashville, I didn't know a soul and I just opened my studio and told people what I did.

The photographer I hired to shoot my first look book was by chance shooting Kelsey Ballerini's Peter Pan music video.

I had six days to get the garment done from call, a final design to New York to turning the garment over final.

And then the next thing I knew, I got a text message from the director and it was this insane video of Kelsey in the desert in Las Vegas holding the massive skirt panels that I did.

And from there, the press just shot me off and then I was getting calls from all the record labels and stylists.

After Kelsey Ballerini, I did Marin Morris's wedding dress, which was such - An honor.

My name is Tiffany Gifford and I'm a celebrity stylist based in Nashville, Tennessee.

What I'm drawn to about Cavanagh's work is the glam factor.

There's a polish to it.

The tailoring is impeccable.

Working with - My everyday clientele is always really fun for me.

It's a completely different experience.

I'm working directly with a person when private clientele come in, not just to shop ready to wear, but to get a custom gown, a custom jacket, whatever it may be, it's a true collaborative process.

- Oh my god, - I love it.

- That - Feels great, doesn't it?

It's like the perfect fit.

The next collection that we have coming out is very western influence.

We have tons of leather, tons of metals, we have hardware.

There's different design elements within the garment, and it's a very kind of western cowboy meets rock and roll Southern, oh my god, it looks so good.

Seeing the first sample on the model for the first time in the real fabric with the right trims and it being flawless is the most relieving feeling in the entire world.

But it doesn't mean the work's done.

You can teach skill, you can teach how to sew, you can teach how to pattern.

So if you have a creative child, you wanna do everything you can to bring that creativity even more fold.

Doesn't matter how hard it gets, how many times you're told no, how many times you fail.

If you get up and you continue, it isn't a failure, it's a learning experience.

I'm Cavanagh Baker and I am a dreamer and I am a maker - Furniture designer.

Christian Dunbar embarked on his creative journey a little later in life.

He came to SCAD in his thirties ready for a fresh start.

Today his one of a kind creations can be found in luxe Manhattan galleries, and each one starts with a slab of wood in a tiny shed.

In rural New York, - The pursuit of beauty can be a drug both good and bad.

In terms of work, it's a dragon.

It can take control of you and not let go.

My name is Christian Dunbar and I am a furniture designer and a sculptor.

When someone asks me what it is I do, I tell them that I make one of a kind pieces out of one of a kind materials.

I usually work with natural materials and try and glorify their inherent characteristics in a way that creates functional art.

I got into fashion and I was a model.

I was traveling and living all over the world.

I'm in my thirties, life is grand.

2008 happens.

I landed in a huge bucket of debt and had to start over.

It was terrifying.

I'm sitting on the computer and I see this ad for this school called scad and I didn't know anything about it.

It was like a cool bench that some furniture guy had made.

I was like, that's pretty cool.

And from that point on, I was all furniture.

And then in undergrad I added a sculpture minor as a non-traditional student in my thirties, knowing that I had to claw myself out of this debt and having real important goals that I had to achieve, my target was on being as productive as I could be.

The support from all the professors was there.

It gave me a new life, jobs that normally you work 10 years to work up to.

I was able to go in and be successful in those jobs almost right outta the gate.

On the flip side, also able to extend my own brand that I worked so hard to create as a Scad student and propel that into now a brand that is shown in those galleries.

My design process is a little wacky.

How strong are we?

Just pretty strong.

I've always been a fan of counterintuitive materialism.

I want things to be unexpected.

I also want the material to drive it because I think there is no better director than nature itself.

When I'm out looking for my next project, I'm always looking for something with some sort of unexpected irregularity that really gives me a stage to perform on.

The material itself provides that The unexpected is my friend.

Unexpected gives me the most to work with and hopefully in a way that it becomes a little magical when you see it.

- When he works on any piece, nature drives him.

He follows her lines.

I'm Genevieve Gorder.

I am an interior designer.

I am also Christian's wife.

- She herself is an incredible world renowned designer.

I can really trust her point of view.

- It's so dynamic.

This is my favorite piece yet - It's a pretty inspiring setup that I have in a little town called Mattituck, New York.

To be able to get in a car drive east and into truly the most beautiful, wildest, most open landscape to come to work gives me the opportunity to come with a fresh mind.

That calm lets the mind work in a way that enables creativity at its best.

The life of a working artist is different than most anything else.

Can you go out there in this bucket of mud and make something pretty out of that?

And let's say you make something pretty outta that bucket of mud.

Now you gotta sell it.

So the idea was the softness contrasting with the hardness.

- I think the modern day client, when they think about luxury furniture, there is always a passion or an interest in the story behind the maker or the artist.

That's why it's so great to have Christian's work represented here.

These pieces really are one of a kind.

That's what luxury means today.

I'm Jackson Gladden and I'm the creative director of Lorin Marsh, which is a custom residential furniture showroom located in Manhattan.

Christian's work at SCAD stood out to me because he had some kind of natural sophistication about his approach to material and a certain kind of sophisticated minimalism.

- I have two pieces in Lorin Marsh currently.

One is a cocktail table, one is a dining table.

The dining table started as a single log of walnut that I had carried around for a few years.

It ended up being two pairs of book match slabs that I then joined together.

It has two reveals going down the center of it that are pretty unique.

It has another gap at one end that I dealt with by inserting polished brass bars.

It has a pearl white set of legs that are wrapped in hair on hide.

It's a wacky table, but people seem to really appreciated.

It's probably unlike anything most people have seen.

- I think that's always a creative issue.

We usually have as creatives, this huge right brain that is so swollen and oversized and amazing and emotional.

And then our left brain is the size of a pea.

Like we can't do arithmetic.

Christian is kind of overflowing in both categories, which makes him stand out both as a person and what he creates.

You've never seen what he makes before and he's never made it before.

It's always a first.

- If I could speak to 20-year-old me, there's certain things that I would tell myself.

Be honest, stay honest both as a person and as a designer, and don't be afraid of that obsession of the craft.

I'm Christian Dunbar.

I'm a dreamer and I'm a maker.

- I hope you've enjoyed meeting a few of our SCAD creators.

I'm Paula Wallace, and until next time, keep dreaming.