Therese Swanepoel’s final envisioned a electrifying vision of Coachella

Therese Swanepoel understands better than most people how a scholarship can change a life. The second-term Environmental Design major was on the brink of dropping out of Art Center due to unexpected financial hardship when she learned that she had been selected as the first recipient of the Joseph and Rebecca Lacko Annual Scholarship.

She was visiting her parents in her home country of South Africa when she got the news via email.  “I simply started crying,” Swanepoel recalls. “My family assumed something bad had happened and soon found out that my tears were tears of joy.”

Joseph Lacko and his wife created a scholarship enabling financially strapped students to attend Art Center.

Created in 2013 by Joseph Lacko (BFA ’97 Film) and his wife, the scholarship is intended to support deserving students in any major who, like Swanepoel, would not otherwise be able to afford to attend or continue their educations at the College.

“I wanted to give back to Art Center in a way that directly helped someone fulfill his or her artistic dream,” Lacko says of the gift. “I’m excited that this scholarship will go to a designer who is recognized across campus for having exceptional talent.”

Although Swanepoel is only in her second term at Art Center, that talent is on full display. Environmental Design instructor Kenneth Cameron, who taught Swanepoel in his Interactive Environment Design studio, describes her “ability to support mature conceptual designs developed across a wide range of media and design prototypes.” Her final project for the course, dubbed Pandora Dome, is a mesmerizing interactive installation for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival that thoughtfully incorporates theories of crowd behavior, swarming and cymatics, or visible expressions of sound. “Her project revealed the potential that interactive technologies can play in the production of a truly unique, colorful and compelling spatial experience,” Cameron adds.

Swanepoel views her Art Center experience as the beginning of a lifelong design career emphasizing social development, innovation and sustainability. “The Lacko Scholarship gave me the chance at fulfilling my dream and living my passion, a chance very rarely given to South Africans,” she says. “I now have a responsibility to be the best designer I can be and to use my skills, time and eventually my success to ‘pay it forward.’”