Brandon Schnotala does what he wants.

He loves art, so that’s what he pur­sues. Before col­lege, he didn’t weigh the pros and cons between career options or how much he might earn. Schnotala knew what he wanted to do and noth­ing else mattered.

His chief rule is there are no rules, eclec­ti­cism at its finest. He might not say as much, but look­ing through his port­fo­lio, he cov­ers the bases from hand drawn abstracts to Shakespearean poetry and rap lyrics.

His chief tool is his com­puter with which he cre­ates elec­tronic paint­ings rem­i­nis­cent of 1960s LSD trips. Each piece is a study in pat­tern, tex­ture and color, and they seem to move and swirl when viewed.

Schnotala is not pre­ten­tious about his work and describes his cre­ative process in plain language.

“I don’t really have a mes­sage behind any of these pieces; I just think they look cool,” Schnotala said.

Schnotala is a Ferris senior look­ing to grad­u­ate from the tele­vi­sion and dig­i­tal media pro­duc­tion pro­gram in May. Like many of his peers, life after col­lege looks uncer­tain, but he hopes to land an intern­ship with the rap­per Tech 9.

“I’m a big fan of his music label and I would really love to do his music videos. I want to do more music videos, maybe work with the Music Industry Management Association (MIMA) a lot more,” he said.

Last year, Schnotala helped pro­duce a music video for the local band Overdrive Orchestra, whose musi­cians are either cur­rent or for­mer mem­bers of MIMA.

His musi­cal inter­ests are just as broad as his artis­tic expres­sions. He enjoys folk music, Lana Del Ray and even lis­tens to clas­si­cal piano when he needs to focus.

“I tried doing home­work to hip-hop. It’s hard, actu­ally impos­si­ble, for me. Just last week I lis­tened to six straight hours of piano. Mozart, Beethoven,” he said.

To top it off, Schnotala plugs in some metal from time to time, enjoy­ing the sounds of bands like Dream Theater.

True to his lay­ered, eclec­tic nature, Schnotala also has a philo­soph­i­cal side, a part of him that care­fully con­sid­ers the life he lives. He is pas­sion­ate about the world around him and wants to live a life in har­mony with others.

Schnotala men­tioned Recognize M.C. and his song “Deep Fried” in which the rap­per talks about the dan­ger­ous grow­ing meth­ods of sup­pli­ers for the fast food indus­try. After tak­ing a biol­ogy class, Schontala holds con­cern about the envi­ron­ment and the food he eats.

“When I get out of col­lege, I want to get a house with about an acre of land and grow my own fruits and veg­eta­bles. I think if the sys­tem we live in were to col­lapse, it could col­lapse the right way if peo­ple have good ethics. It can’t be fixed with pol­icy. It will never even itself out,” he said.

“You should live and let live,” Schnotala admon­ishes. “I think that’s the only way to really fix it.”

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