Imagine a woman who has an apple as a heart. The apple is rotting and is visible from her front and back.

She is pregnant and her stomach is cut open from the top.

Inside there is bruised Earth and pieces of metal in which you can see yourself. She is painted red, the color of blood.

This is a sculpture, displayed on campus last semester was created by Dawn Ertl, fine arts major, with an emphasis in sculpture, who wants to become a gallery artist.

“I want to become a professional and hopefully make some kind of difference,” she said.

Ertl knows what she wants and is working toward it.

“She is really dedicated” and “puts a lot of time into her sculpture,” Russell McMillin, art professor, said.

Her earlier art revolved around her emotions, then classroom assignments, and now she wants to address political issues.

“I’ve done a couple of political type of pieces before; I just want to lean more toward that area instead of just making something pretty,” Ertl said.

Concern for the environment is currently one of the political issues that she is tackling in her art.

The woman represents Mother Earth and the rotting apple represents the “mortality of mankind,” Ertl said.

“I chose the apple as her heart because I believe the apple symbolizes religion and first sin,” she said.

“The apple symbolized the heart of the planet, the beginning of her death and the beginning of mankind’s disconcert for her well-being,” she said.

The pieces of metal that showed the viewers’ reflection were “to show the destruction of our planet is our own fault,” Ertl said.

Her work has been displayed on campus and at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery and Angels Gate.

“I like it a lot,” she said about being able to show her work.

“I could have stood in the back forever just watching people’s reaction. It was very exciting to see people so interested.”

Students react in two ways to her work. They are either “puzzled” or “they get it,” McMillin said.

As an artist, Ertl must know how to handle criticism.

“It’s important to do your art for you and not everyone else; if someone doesn’t like it, you can’t take it too personally,” Ertl said.

Interest in art has always been a part of Ertl’s life, even as a young child.

“I was definitely one of those kids who liked to draw on the walls; I started taking myself more seriously as an artist though after receiving my first set of chalk pastels,” Ertl said.

As a college student ,she began taking sculpture classes approximately three years ago and has been “obsessed ever since,” she said.

On sculpting as an art form, Ertl said, “You can take an object and make it into something else. I can use any medium I want, only in sculpture it will be three-D, and not flat; I just think that’s a lot more exciting.”

Ertl said she is inspired by everything.

“It’s important to me to see as much as possible and I’m inspired by what I see around me,” Ertl said.

She uses her art to reach out and to spread her message to many people.

“Art is the one universal language; it’s going to touch everybody and it might be different for everybody,” Ertl said.

As she heads toward the political realm, she is expressing things that she believes need to be said.

“Art is our most important language; it has no borders,” Ertl said. “It’s still open to interpretation; it can subtle, but strong and powerful; there are a lot of things that need to be said right now, and art is our true freedom of speech that seems to be left.”