Rising Star THRIVE Award Winner: Zora

After selling her first set of ceramic sculptures in high school, Zora knew she could be a professional artist, but far before that she knew she was blessed with the skill of creating.

From a young age, Zora was crocheting, and repurposing all the textile scraps she could find — both to experiment with her art and to limit the amount of waste in the world.  

When she was in high school, she took a series of ceramics courses.

“I got really into ceramics and just making all kinds of different molds and glazes,” Zora explained. “Mixing different chemicals together to see how the reactions affected or how the colors change, all that kind of stuff, is what I love to do now. 

At the end of senior year, she held an art show that yielded some great results.  

“I had an opening show, and I made a good amount of money selling everything I made that year,” she remembered. “After I started selling, I realized, ‘oh, I could live off of this, like this could be a real thing.”

Around that time, her mother became an Atlanta Habitat homeowner. With a solid home base established, Zora felt comfortable to dream a little bigger.  

Zora is a double major at Georgia State in art and business. Her dream is to live and study art all over the world but wants to make sure she can build a business around it.  

After applying for a VGA (Vision. Goals. Action.) Scholarship, Zora was able to purchase some of the more expensive art supplies she needs for art school.  

“Currently I’m getting more into metal and soldering, welding and all that,” Zora said. “But I feel like ceramics always have a special part in my heart because it’s the main thing that showed me that I could make money off of my art and so I feel like that’s always my strongest piece.”

At the THRIVE Awards, Zora was awarded the Rising Star Award for being a child of an Atlanta Habitat homeowner who is already thriving academically and taking advantage of our VGA (Vision. Goals. Action!) scholarship opportunities.