Note: In the days leading up to graduation, we are profiling a number of seniors whose interests and accomplishments exemplify the diverse talents that make up the Class of 2008. These students and their classmates are ready to make an impact that extends far beyond Uni High. For the first portrait in this series, see Maritza Mestre's profile of Eunice How. See also Laura Dripps' profile of Kumars Salehi, Sindha Agha's portrait of Erin Hayes, Elaine Gu's profile of Ethan Berl, and Erika Belmont's portrait of Alex Zhai.

HOW MANY HIGH school students do you know who have been accepted to a prestigious school of the arts? And of those, how many were commissioned to paint a mural on a restaurant wall that spans eight square feet?

Anna Cangellaris is a senior with the talent and drive to have already accomplished both of these things. Not only that, but she didn’t plan on any of it happening.

At a young age, she played with coloring books and watched her mom draw her simple pictures. Her first realization that she might do something with art when she got older was when she drew a ballerina in second grade and her friends told her it was good.

On the other hand, Cangellaris is not what you might think of when you hear about someone who is pursuing art and is going to a design school with the No. 1-ranked art program in the country.

There is a poignant lack of the stereotypical beret and paint-streaked hands that you might expect from someone whose life has been so entirely affected by art. Instead you can usually see her hanging out in the lounge listening to music or just walking the halls in jeans and a T-shirt.

So how does someone who once put art “on the back burner,” as she put it, end up going to the most prestigious design school in the country? The Rhode Island School of Design was the only art school that Anna applied to, and she did that almost on a whim. With a little luck and a lot of talent, she managed to get in.

“None of the other schools that I had been accepted to had a very strong art program, and I had decided at that point that art was an important part of my life,” she recalls.

So when RISD accepted her, the decision of where she would go to college became much simpler, and Cangellaris is very satisfied with the choice she made. A career in advertisement might be in her future because, as she says, “I think some of the very important issues of society and the environmental and political spheres can be presented through design and images.”

She wants to create awareness of these issues and encourage people to “instigate change and improvement in those areas.”

Specifically, Cangellaris wants to help the environment through her art and advertising. She is going to use her talents to urge people to recycle and make people aware of the rapidly diminishing fish population and depletion of natural resources.

Using the skills that she has developed over the years through art classes at Uni and practice, she believes that these goals can be accomplished. All of her work has led to her wanting to create “emotionally loaded and informational messages through art."

Art to most people is a hobby, manifested in our lives only by doodling in notebooks during class. To Cangellaris, it is so much more.

“Whether we know it or not, our lives are governed by art,” she says. “The way we dress ourselves, the music we listen to, how we determine visual appeal, is all driven by our artistic tastes and others' influences. To me art is the most emotional level of expression I can achieve. It's my creative outlet in which I interpret things I hear, see, and think, into lines, shapes, and colors that ultimately describe myself.”

So be sure not to forget about this artistic soon-to-be graduate. One day, her designs and ads might influence you on a level that you never expected.