User:Happyshergill09

Early Life
Elana Mann was born on November 26th, 1980. She grew up in a small suburb in Boston, Massachusetts called Newton. This small town of hers was nicknamed "Jewton" because of it's heavy Jewish population. She was born and raised Jewish by her two parents along with her older brother. Again, this town of hers was heavily populated with Jewish people, this making a huge impact on her as she explained that this caused her to grow up in a "Jewish bubble". Mann has explained how her upbringing didn't have much of an impact on her choice to pursue art as a career, since she explained Judaism as a more "oral culture" where sounds and listening play a big part in the practices, and visuals are seen as a sin. She explains this sin through an example: In Judaism it is a sin to see god, but you are allowed to listen to him. So her choice to pursue visual arts didn't correlate much with her religious upbringing. Although, Mann mentioned how she was attracted to music and performance art while in undergrad and later realized that this connected back to her Jewish upbringing. She also mentioned that her grandparents practiced art as a hobby, and her family all had practical jobs and saw art as more of a hobby than a career, but this didn't change her mind of wanting to pursue it anyway. Mann doodled and such as child and all throughout her grade school years, it wasn't until she took a college art course through her high school, where she was recommended to pursue art more seriously.

Education
After graduating High School, Elana Mann had decided to major in Sculpture in college. She had attended Washington University in St. Louis, MO, Bachelor of Fine Arts, with a major in sculpture, graduating Summa Cum Laude in 2003. After, she attended graduate school at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), in Valencia, CA, with a Master of Fine Arts in 2007. All throughout college, she had the financial support of her parents which she is very thankful for but after graduating, Mann had gotten to work with a variety of different jobs to help fund her art career. She had many jobs of many different skill sets, one job included Construction and building houses while others were very different from each other like her temporary teaching job. With these different jobs, she had learned to wear many hats and create a well rounded resume. Now, she still practices art but she mentions her love for mentoring, especially the youth. She may have not enjoyed her teaching job, but mentoring is something she holds close to her heart.