Dinette Finds His Silver Lining
John Milton wrote in Comus “Was I deceived or did a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on the night?” Or in more simple terms you’ll hear today – “Every cloud has a silver lining.”
In 2020, there were a lot of dark clouds and uncertainty swirling around current Duke graduate student wrestler Gabe Dinette. A redshirt freshman for the Stanford wrestling team during the 2019-20 season, Dinette’s life came to a halt when in March the country came to a stop, having to head home to Colorado to finish the academic year virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic .
Then a few months later in July, with the COVID-19 pandemic still raging, Stanford announces it is going to cut wrestling and 10 other sports due to financial reasons exacerbated by COVID-19. With his wrestling future up in the air, Dinette started making plans to earn his undergraduate degree early and find a new home for his final two seasons in the wrestling room.
“It was all of these negative things,” said Dinette. “Stanford was cutting wrestling, COVID [kept us at home] and so we weren’t able to be on campus. It was all of those factors. Then I found this passion for art. Without all of those happening I don’t think I ever would have taken the class.”
“It was all of these negative things,” said Dinette. “Stanford was cutting wrestling, COVID [kept us at home] and so we weren’t able to be on campus. It was all of those factors. Then I found this passion for art. Without all of those happening I don’t think I ever would have taken the class.”Gabe Dinette
Needing additional credits to graduate early from Stanford, Dinette enrolled in an art class and quickly took a liking to it. And it turns out, drawing took a liking to him as his family showed some of his early drawings to friends and they wondered if Dinette could do some drawings for them.
“Initially [I got back into drawing] for the classes,” Dinette said. “Now it’s just fun. One, it’s an outlet. [I have] a busy schedule with sports and training every day. Art is a good outlet to relax and open up that creative mindset that I have. And two, I’ve always enjoyed creating and making things and so when I can’t do that from an engineering project this is another way I can do that.”
Dinette remembers sketching when he was around six or seven and enjoying it for a few years, but by the time he reached high school, sports and school became his primary major focus and he put the pencils down.
Ironically, years later it was school again that kind of forced Dinette to find art again. And all it took was that one class at Stanford.
“That [class at Stanford] sparked my interest in drawing and so when I came to Duke, and I had to take more units to graduate I did another art class, and I still felt the same way.”Gabe Dinette
For Dinette, drawing, which he does mostly with graphite pencils, is a perfect blend of preciseness and creativity. As an engineering major – Dinette is currently enrolled in Duke’s Master of Engineering Management program – he is used to dealing in exact numbers and processes and having virtually zero room for error. And wrestling is not exactly a sport that allows athletes much space for error. A physically demanding sport in which you must maintaining a certain weight, wrestling requires incredible individual determination and intensity and leaves little room for mistakes on the wrestling mat. Drawing truly helps Dinette find a balance.
“I think with the pencils it’s more of a mix [of exact, but still creative]. I try to make it as realistic as possible so it’s kind of formula based, but at the same time you can’t make it exactly like the picture because it’s still a drawing and you want it to be seen as a drawing so it’s the more subjective side. But when I was doing paintings with pastels, which I didn’t have as much experience with, it was the fully subjective side of ‘Just go for it, figure it out.’ You just kind of explore and play with it. It’s a break from the hard structure of engineering and wrestling and practice and training. I can do it however I want and that’s the right way.”
Drawing and art has also been a way for Dinette to put himself on display. No, he’s not creating self-portraits, but he is drawing pieces of his life. His favorite subjects are his Akita Tomiyama (Tomi) – named for Olympic Japanese gold medalist in wrestling – and wildlife, reflecting his lifelong passions of wrestling, exploring the outdoors and going hunting and fishing.
“My dog has been my main subject for a lot of them,” Dinette said. “The wildlife is from the passion of I like to fish and hunt and be outdoors. Animals are fun to draw. There are so many different textures and I really like to capture their eyes.”
As Dinette’s pieces started to come together, he did exactly what his generation does best and started to think how he could use it as way to build his personal brand and perhaps monetize this hobby and skill. Take a visit to justdrawin_art_fillipino_g on Instagram and see Dinette’s process and final pieces and get a sliver of insight into Dinette the person as well. Keep an eye out and you just might see an ETSY store where you can send in pictures for Dinette to sketch in the future.
So, while he’s not spending time in class working on a group project with his fellow engineering classmates or sweating away in the wrestling room for the Blue Devils, Dinette is honing his newly found skill at home in his room.
He continues to explore drawing and sketching nature and animals, but recently has ventured into drawing human figures as well with some of his latest pieces being striking drawings of men you might see in a country western movie.
When not doing the “quick” daily sketches you might see on Instagram, Dinette dedicates time to a project important to him he started while at Stanford where he amplifies the importance of mental health by leaning on experiences he has had or shared as a student-athlete.
“I’m working on this project, which carried over from Stanford,” Dinette said. “It’s an A-B-C format. Each letter has its own representation of something. I was kind of taking the stance of mental health in athletes and using my experiences and building it out from there.”
While sometimes Dinette thinks back and wonders what might have been if he had continued to pursue this interest and hone his skills throughout high school and early years of college, he has no regrets. These are just musings. But he is incredibly thankful for the silver lining of art that came to him in the cloud of uncertainty.
