HUNTER SCHAFER
by MATTHEW JAMES-WILSON
Hunter Schafer is keen member of a generation of young people characterized by their un-
bridled acceptance and opportunity. Like many artists starting out, Hunter has used art as a means to combat and process the internal and external conflicts that have shaped who she is. But what separates her from so many of her peers starting out is her fearlessness to make her work personal and anecdotal, giving her audience a chance to confront the experiences she’s had in life, despite how raw or potent they still may be. Where many artist, young and old, falter at the idea of exposing their current life and emotions, Hunter uses her work as a means to articulate her experience and encourage others to reflect on their own.
Hunter is one of the few people that’s ever made me feel old and unaccomplished. Before
graduating high school, Hunter has worked with a wide range of publications, high fashion labels, and activist organizations, while still taking pride in developing her own personal work. She’s so far along in understanding the components and intentions behind making work, that it’s really difficult to see exactly how far she will catapult into the art world after leaving school. Regardless of where she decides to take her work, she has a bright future ahead of, encompassing everything she’s already learned and tackled.
Where are you from and where do you live currently? I’m from Trenton, New Jersey. I currently go to a public boarding high school in Winston Salem, North Carolina, so I’m sort of half living between there and with my family in Raleigh, NC. Was there any sort of art or subcultural scene where you grew up? My childhood is kind of split up among several locations, so I can’t really attribute one place to where I grew up. There might have been certain subcultures or art scenes in my surrounding areas, but I don’t think I was ever immersed in them. I’ve had friends who were super into punk and metal music and were part of that smaller scene—particularly in Raleigh—but I never fully resonated with those communities. It was kind of isolating, but at the same time forced me to create my own personal culture that I could happily exist in. I definitely found most of my artistic community later and through the internet. What were some of the art communities you found on the internet? It started with DeviantArt, which many of my friends used in middle school. It was more of a form of rebellion than anything else, haha. My parents kept finding my accounts after I hid them from them, because I wasn’t allowed to have any online presence at the time. They deleted them, but I continued to use the site. My friends and I posted our artwork and writing on there. It moved to Tumblr from there, then Instagram, and then Rookie, which has been heavily influential towards who I am today.
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