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Residential Programs Administrator
Noel Dahl
Residential Programs Administrator, Stanford Introductory Studies Operations
I was born at the Subic Bay Navy Hospital in the Philippines, on a day that would curse me like no other day ever could---Christmas Day. I shouldn't complain, my birthdays were filled with two-for-one-presents, religious nativities and midnight masses, and too many festive Christmas songs. Its left a mark. Being one of five kids, my mom (I was her favorite) said it wasn't only convenient for the family that I was born on December 25, but it could ensure her a ticket into heaven once I went off to seminary school. Yes, that's what she wanted.
But naturally, I ran in the opposite direction. I was a natural at drawing from observation, making things, and pretending. Theater was were I landed. I auditioned for the Arts High School, where I found my people! Creative young teens--we were outcast from all over the state of Minnesota to live and learn the arts--Theater, Dance, Music, Writing, Visual Arts, and Interdisciplinary Media. I was even an RA in the dorms my senior year. But good things have to end and I had had enough of the long rehearsals with teenage method actors who were their characters 24/7, Goth and Emo attitudes, and babysitting classmates tripping on acid. It was fun times, it was the 90's.
Of course since then my love for the arts has fueled and sustained me through being an art major at the University of Wisconsin--Madison to completing my MFA at Cal Arts. The arts inspire me, motivating me to put my creativity in everything, and gave me the skills to make a lot of something from nothing. I love to design and make things, from paintings to all kinds of art objects, to pdf forms, handbooks, staff training manuals---in a way its all kind of the same. Even thinking back to my performance work that calls one to maintain an acute attention to the body and space--the body in relation to architecture can often for me be applied to a whole array of different events.
This is all to say that I'll always bring my creative spark to the table.
But naturally, I ran in the opposite direction. I was a natural at drawing from observation, making things, and pretending. Theater was were I landed. I auditioned for the Arts High School, where I found my people! Creative young teens--we were outcast from all over the state of Minnesota to live and learn the arts--Theater, Dance, Music, Writing, Visual Arts, and Interdisciplinary Media. I was even an RA in the dorms my senior year. But good things have to end and I had had enough of the long rehearsals with teenage method actors who were their characters 24/7, Goth and Emo attitudes, and babysitting classmates tripping on acid. It was fun times, it was the 90's.
Of course since then my love for the arts has fueled and sustained me through being an art major at the University of Wisconsin--Madison to completing my MFA at Cal Arts. The arts inspire me, motivating me to put my creativity in everything, and gave me the skills to make a lot of something from nothing. I love to design and make things, from paintings to all kinds of art objects, to pdf forms, handbooks, staff training manuals---in a way its all kind of the same. Even thinking back to my performance work that calls one to maintain an acute attention to the body and space--the body in relation to architecture can often for me be applied to a whole array of different events.
This is all to say that I'll always bring my creative spark to the table.
Education
BFA, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Fine Arts (2000)
MFA, California Institute of the Arts, Fine Arts (2002)