From Entrepreneurship to STEM: Zvezda Damian’s Journey

At 59, Zvezda Damian spends her days surrounded by paintbrushes, acrylics, oils, recycled materials, and conversations with her students. She has been a visual artist for 35 years, yet she says she is still learning. Today, she is studying Digital and Web Design and is one of the recipients of the Luksic More Women in STEM scholarship for technical and vocational education students, which provides a monthly stipend of CLP 150,000 to support their studies. She explains that she chose this field because she believes understanding the digital world is essential to teaching and sharing her artistic work.

Her story began long before she ever stepped into a classroom. “I’ve been an artist since I was born,” she says. As a child, she made clothes from secondhand garments. The desire to learn and to teach has shaped her entire life, and today it lives on through the art academy she founded 16 years ago in Arica—a dream she carried with her for decades.

Turning that dream into reality was far from easy. Like many artists, and while raising her daughter, she had to take on different jobs to make her project possible. She painted entire apartments with brushes and rollers, launched small businesses in various fields, and never stopped looking for new opportunities. “I had to provide for my daughter. That’s what all mothers do,” she says.

When she moved to Arica in 2010, she started almost from scratch. She built her workshop with whatever she had on hand. Her first students came to learn weaving, and over time, the academy grew through word of mouth. Today, it is equipped with easels, drawing stands, and a printmaking press, welcoming around 20 students each month—from older adults attending morning classes to teenagers filling the studio in the afternoons.

But the space she created goes far beyond teaching artistic techniques. For Zvezda, art is also a way to support and connect with people. “We talk about life, about the planets. They tell me about their lives, they play,” she explains. At a time when, in her view, children are “more connected to a device than to themselves,” she wants her studio to be a place where people reconnect with their creativity and with one another. “All forms of art connect you with yourself. I want them to start seeing life in more colors,” she says.

That same spirit inspired her to return to school. Although she admits that starting a new degree at 59 is not easy—especially for those who did not grow up surrounded by technology—she believes the world changed after the pandemic and that adapting is essential. She says her daughter proudly tells everyone that her mother is studying, and that her example even encouraged her 83-year-old mother to enroll in a computer course offered by the local municipality.

Her ability to reinvent herself also became evident during the pandemic. In 2020, she received support from Fundación Luksic’s Impulso Chileno program to purchase equipment for her small business producing dehydrated fruit and orange-filled chocolates. The dehydrators she acquired through the program allowed her to continue making her products, which she now sells primarily through her art academy. Although she acknowledges that the business has not been as profitable as she had hoped due to competition from low-cost ultra-processed foods, she has never stopped trying.

Environmental awareness is a central theme in her work. Many of her pieces invite people to reflect on the impact of waste on the planet, particularly plastic pollution in the oceans. “It breaks my heart to see how much garbage ends up in the sea. What I can do is teach the people around me,” she says. In her classes, she encourages conversations about recycling and the so-called “plastic island,” convinced that art can also inspire environmental awareness.

After decades devoted to creating, Zvezda continues to pursue the same dream: building a space where art helps people discover new ways of seeing the world. As she often tells those who walk into her studio, “A creative person is better equipped to overcome whatever challenges life brings.”