Caroline Freese came to Iowa State with an undecided major, but after a drawing class sparked in her an interest in art, she began the process to complete a self-portrait made entirely from Skittles.

Freese, now a senior in Integrated Studio Arts, had taken some art classes in high school, but it had been nothing more than a hobby, she said.

That was until she attended a drawing class under Nancy Thompson, lecturer in the arts and visual culture department.

“[She] was my favorite teacher… and she made me understand a lot of stuff that I didn’t understand prior,” Freese said.

The idea for her Skittles project came to her during a color theory class, also taught by Thompson.

“I did magazine collages, and I really liked doing that,” she said. “That’s kind of where I got the idea to use Skittles as a collaging medium, because they’re just like dots of color.”

“I had thought of this in the fall of 2013,” Freese said, “While I was eating them actually.”

Freese went through a long process of planning out her idea, coming up with a price estimate and applying for a Focus grant.

“There was no way that I would’ve been able to do it without funding, so that’s why I applied for the Focus grant,” she said.

“[Students] …can get up to $600 to pay for supplies and things like that for their grant project,” Thompson said. “It’s not just visual arts, but there’s [also] music students who applied for some grants.”

“It’s sponsored through the MU Fine Arts in the student activity center,” Freese said. “It’s run by Letitia Kenemer, who is actually my boss… in the workspace in the Memorial Union.”

Thompson, along with Chris Martin, Freese’s woodshop instructor, advised Freese during her project, she said.

“Caroline’s just an awesome artist,” Thompson said. “She’s hard working and carries her ideas through to fruition.

Caroline didn’t just place Skittles randomly on a board; a lot of thought went into color use.

“I take a look at color and I analyze a lot of what people like as a mass… what really interests people, and how color affects how people view art,” Freese said. “I started thinking of consumerism, and actually using these Skittles, what [was] I trying to say?”

“Consumerism is… all around us and we don’t always see it as what it is, but I’m trying to take a positive light to things,” she said. “Maybe instead of trying to stop it or hate it, just use it to your advantage.”

“So I’m using this consumerist product to my advantage to represent myself as part of society,” Freese said.

Thought went into the type of candy she used as well.

“M&M’s would melt and other candies don’t come in as many colors or maybe are more expensive or smaller, so Skittles are perfect,” she said. “They’re approximately a half inch wide, they have six different brands of Skittles with five different colors in each one.”

Despite her thought that Skittles would be the best candy to use, Freese ran into a problem.

“I ran into fading of the colors,” she said. “If you were to look at it now, you would never be able to tell because I put a finish over it, but when I was working on it, …[it] started to discolor a little.”

In the end, Freese used somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 Skittles to complete her project.

Freese gave credit to two artists for some of her inspiration: Andy McGee and Andy Warhol.

“Andy McGee, who exhibited here at Morrill Hall my freshman year… made sugar packets into Marilyn Monroe and burnt toast into Jesus,” she said. “Not that I thought of the project while looking at his work, but in the end they were similar, and I credit him for putting that thought into my mind subconsciously.”

“It was also inspired by Andy Warhol,” Freese said. “I think his work really revolutionized a part of the art world and I always thought that he had a particular interest in color, whether or not that’s necessarily true.”

Freese’s family was also a big part of the process, in particular: her mother.

“My mom, bless her heart, sorted all the Skittles for me and she sat out there as I was working on it,” she said. “My parents were super excited, they loved seeing my progress and asking me about it and they really cared about the project.”

Freese said she hopes to put out a time-lapse video of her working on the Skittles project.

“I’m not super great with video editing, so I’m hoping it will work out,” she said.

This project may be the first of many for Freese, as she has already thought of new ideas.

“This project has definitely sparked new ideas,” she said. “It has definitely sparked an interest in food art.”

One idea is to create a mandala out of popsicles and to watch them melt under the sun to represent the impermanence of things, she said.

Freese’s ultimate goal is to have her own business.

“My hope is to intern with an already established artist either in the production area or in the fine art area,” she said. “My hope is to someday have my own business… it just takes a while because there’s so much to learn in my degree.”

Her self-portrait, along with many other projects funded by the Focus: Artist Grant Program, will be on display in the Pioneer Room in the Memorial Union from March 23 through April 25, 2016.