Scott Burkholder, a 2002 graduate from the Whiting School of Engineering, never gave much thought to the arts while he was studying at Hopkins.
"I came from a small town with not a lot of culture and referred to the other school at Hopkins [the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences] as ‘The School of Arts and Crafts,'" he said.
An Alexandria, Minnesota native, Burkholder applied to Hopkins based on its stellar reputation for health care and medicine and its close proximity to his older brother, who was then studying at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis.
"You could do whatever you wanted and be embraced. If you were motivated, you could find internships, you could do research. As I look back, for someone who was fairly self-motivated and wanted to explore a lot, that was great for me. In no way would people hold my hand and make the process easy, but people were never dull," Burkholder reflected on his time at Hopkins.
Burkholder himself was certainly never dull: while double majoring in Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Burkholder remained involved on campus through organizing the JHU Model United Nations Conference, joining a BME Design Team when the program was first introduced in his freshman year and participating in activities run through Campus Ministries. Additionally, Burkholder worked at the Transgenic Core Facility at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, providing embryonic stem cells to embryos with the desired mutations requested by researchers and became involved with the Cycling Club upon purchasing a mountain bike in his junior year.
In fact, Burkholder met his first employer while in transit from the Homewood campus to his job at the medical campus.
"I met a guy who was becoming a principal laboratory investigator on the shuttle, and he asked if I would be his senior lab technician — setting up the lab and getting things ready for him. I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I thought it would be good exposure to doctors and basic research," Burkholder stated.
He decided to stay involved in Hopkins research and signed onto the lab for a two-year contract.
While working at the lab, Burkholder supplemented his income by painting. Burkholder learned to paint growing up with his mother, who was an interior decorator. With his artistic eye, he painted his friends' homes.
"When the two years were up, I learned I didn't want to do basic science research, and I didn't want to go into medicine. By that time, I could sustain myself full-time by painting," he explained.
Burkholder decided he could transition into business by pursuing his painting business full-time.
"I found out I loved being my own entrepreneur, being my own boss, interacting with clients and at the end of the day feeling like I had accomplished something. I started hiring artists to work for me, and, through those relationships, I think my philosophy on art started to change, as well of my perception of what was important," Burkholder said. "Art can show the world what it is, and, more importantly, show the world what it can be or the hopes that we have."
And an important year it was: not only did he meet and marry his wife, Jenn, but one of his employees was injured on the job for the first time.
"I didn't have health care insurance for him, and he didn't have health care either," Burkholder said. "I started to think about my responsibilities to my wife, to my future family and as a small business owner. I came into painting as a default, and I started thinking, what's next? How do I transition into what I wanted to do?"
Yet Burkholder admits that he was not quite sure what he wanted to do at the time, and that indecisiveness was reflected in his business school applications — he was denied admission to every graduate school he applied to.
"The next year, one of the artists I had been working with, Michael Owen, asked me if I would be doing interested in doing the business side of a large public art project. I said sure — I thought it could set me apart on an application for business school."
Owen's project was the beginning stages of the Baltimore Love Project, the campaign responsible for painting 20 murals of hands spelling out the word "LOVE" across the communities of Baltimore City.
Concurrently to operating his business and developing the Baltimore Love Project, Burkholder focused on applying to business school, this time expressing an intention to work in the art business.
"It was 2008, people were fleeing from Wall Street and applying to business school. A guy who was painting houses was not likely to get in — I got on the waitlist," he recalled.
"I applied again a third time, this time from the standpoint that art is social, and when my interviewer told me ‘I don't understand how art is social, I think art is a luxury,' I realized I probably wouldn't get in. The last three and a half years of working has been my MBA education," Burkholder explained.
Burkholder currently is the Executive Director of the Baltimore Love Project, a job which entails Burkholder provide as much creativity to the Owens in creating his murals as possible.
"My favorite thing about this job is the amazing people I get to meet. I have the opportunities to engage with the most creative and intelligent people I've met in the city of Baltimore," he said.
Burkholder also enjoys the "unexpected professional things" that come up in his line of work. "Last week, we had two different couples approach us and ask if they could use our image in their wedding. An architecture firm is building a structure of canned goods and wanted to spell out ‘Love' for a charitable project and asked if they could use our concept. We were asked to submit pictures for a travel section for a newspaper in London. It's an amazing and humbling feeling to be a part of such a positive project," Burkholder mused.
So, what knowledge does the engineer-turned-artist wish to pass down to younger Blue Jays?
"Go to events filled with people that are not like yourself. For me as an engineer, I love going to events filled with artistically-minded people — it's totally expanded and enhanced my knowledge of the world and made a more enriching experience. Intelligence comes in many forms. It's not all about the SATs or solving differential equations. Someone who has the ability to conduct a piece of music or create a poem has a pretty good grasp of the world, and there's an opportunity to learn from them."
