Do you remember the moment you realized what you wanted to do professionally? Was it magic? Was it scary? We wanted to hear from some of the most talented artists and creatives in the community and so we asked them to tell us the story of the moment when they knew they were going to pursue a creative career path.

Josh Washam

I come from a very musical family. My mom was a High School Choir Director and my dad was a High School Band Director. I took piano lessons from kindergarten to high school. I started playing drums in 4th grade and played throughout school. I picked up the guitar early on and also took voice lessons. Read more>>

Katie Meuser

When I moved to Chicago in 2015, I started thinking about my artwork as more of a career than a hobby because it seemed possible in Chicago. I received a BFA in Fine Arts and Humanity at the University Of Nebraska at Kearney in 2008 and just had the traditional industry jobs that came with the territory of a humanities degree. I was never a 9-5 or corporate person and didn’t care what job I had as long as I could focus on my paintings. Read more>>

Stacey Peasley

I had been a singer performing live since the age of 18 as a part time job while going to college. After earning my degrees, I became a full-time Middle School teacher, while singing on the side. After I had my first child, I became a stay at home mom and started writing songs related to parenting, children, etc. for fun. I was inspired by the Children’s artist Laurie Berkner after seeing her on TV and realized maybe one could perform live with kids music! Read more>>

Yuri Miyoshi

In 2004, while I was still working in Tokyo, my fate changed when I met a designer who worked for that company. He was looking for someone who could write the characters for the sign of a restaurant in Kyoto in calligraphy. Of course, I had never written the restaurant’s name logo in calligraphy, but somehow, despite the fact that there were several of my colleagues in the office at the time, I could write it! I said. Read more>>

Michelle Belton

Of course! It all started coming together after the pandemic, I went from being in the office 5 days a week with a 2-4 hour daily commute to abruptly working from home full-time. I am an adaptable person, so I immediately was able to navigate the waters of this transition. Now that I had these extra 2-4 hours available in my schedule, I found time to explore things I haven’t touched in a while and that was art. Read more>>

Urooj Metalwala

My love for events , seeing family and friends happy and passion for Makeup and Hairstyling led me in this field. I don’t remember exactly when it happened but yes been a while now that I decided to be in artistry field professionally. It’s just I enjoy my time making my beautiful clients look more beautiful as beautiful they are from heart. Read more>>

Simone Bicek

It actually took me over a year in my photography journey to figure out I wanted to work with more of a creative style/medium. I started my photography business back in 2020. I was mainly working with families and weddings. I enjoyed and still do enjoy working on that side of photography, but I wasn’t fully happy or inspired with it. Read more>>

Felicia Garcia

I had always been interested in art as a child. But it wasn’t until my first photography class, in high school, that I decided I wanted to become an artist. That was when I began to understand that art and creativity was something that I could actually pursue professionally. Photography came easy to me because I was already familiar with the foundations of art and design. I just had to learn the technical skills. Read more>>

Isabella Kung

It was probably around Sophomore or Junior year in High School. Like most artists, I have loved drawing since I was a young child, I dreamed about becoming a painter or a designer in elementary school. Though that dream quickly got squashed by strict parents and a society where an artist’s career didn’t have as many prospects (I was born and raised in Hong Kong). Read more>>

Kamesha B

I knew I wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path when I was 6 or 7 years old. My older sister would play and purchase my siblings and I movies from The Lion King to Toy story; and if I wasn’t watching those movies I was watching sitcoms with mom every evening before dinner. I grew up in a big family- 5 siblings and a slew of cousins and family friends where our play time consisted of playing outside for hours and rewatching the same African American movies over and over again. Read more>>

Geneva Little

Growing up I didn’t hear many stories about becoming a artist, creative or even a entrepreneur. When asked, I told my parents I would go to school to become a supreme court judge because I like to tell people what to do. Not knowing that as I got older, becoming a Supreme Court judge was the last thing on my radar. I just knew that I wanted to have a career that made my heart sing. Read more>>

Solely Tone

Looking back I’d say it was always an interest, even if only slightly. 2020 really put a lot into a specific perspective for me. I was dealing with an array of difficulties, personally. Quarantine gave me plenty of time to dance alone with my thoughts and think about myself and who that actually was, and what I actually wanted. I made the definite choice to pursue this for real around that time. Read more>>

Sean Nadeau

My parents met at Hollywood High. Both my mother’s parents had been contract players for the studios in the 30’s. My grandpa Carlyle Moore Jr. was actually pretty successful in ingenue and ‘kid in trouble’ roles in B movies. His dad had been a Broadway playwright and his mother still had dozens of contacts from their vaudeville days (including Cecil DeMille!). WWII put him on a path to electrical engineering where he stayed, till bone cancer from long term exposure microwave radiation took him in 78. Read more>>

Mariia Kiseleva

My journey into the world of creativity began easily at an early age, when I learned to hold pencils, brushes, paints and draw. I remember my mother began to let me color and draw pictures, and I drew and colored with her every day. Already at that age I liked bright colors. Then I liked making different handicrafts and modeling with clay, assembling a constructor. Read more>>

katrina howarth

After having a show of my Scottish landscape paintings in a college display and selling quite a few of them – the excitement of someone enjoying them and willing to pay for them and start collecting really gave me an excitement of what could be possible. Read more>>

Lauren Davidson

I knew I wanted to pursue a creative path professionally when I was around 11 years old. Growing up on Long Island, New York, one of my favorite things to do was visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. Although my family was not artistic, my mother supported my interests and was happy to spend a day in the city going to the museum and indulging my art addiction. Read more>>

Mari Weldon

One of first memories was posing for my Mom as she painted my portrait in oil paints. Was magical to me, to watch her look at subject matter and paint it thru her own interpretation…thru her own eyes. Plus watching the paint being squirted out of the tubes…the colors literally glowed like neon lights. (Realized when grew up I had synesthesia…when one sense is turned on, or heightened, all the other senses turn on at the same time). Read more>>

ShaThaGoddess

During the pandemic, I decided to take a leap in faith to follow my dreams of being a music producer. I always enjoy creating music but I never had the confidence to pursue this career path. During the pandemic, I had a lot of free time on my hands and started making beats for my beat page. Once I made 5 beats, I started uploading to Beatstars and Youtube. Read more>>

Scott Rockvam

Honestly, I still don’t know if I do! HAHA! I mean, I have always wanted to do something creative with my life. When I was in high school I told my guidance counselor that I wanted to travel to mountain towns, meet people, immerse myself in the culture, the music scenes, the food, the whole lifestyle & bring it to the masses. Basically like the Anthony Bourdain of mountain culture. Read more>>

Juan Volante

The art was always in my path, since I was kid I love to draw to paint! I feel in love watching the painting at the museum and all the expressions of art in the street like a graffiti Read more>>

Victor Dandridge

I didn’t like to read as a child. Books, at least traditionally classic stories like Tom Sawyer or Hatchet, just didn’t appeal to me. I was a child of pop culture. Growing up in the 80’s, my love of music and movies, cartoons and video games, ruled! But all that changed when announced on the news that Superman was going to die. The Death of Superman brought me into the comics and my adoration with the medium was immediate! Read more>>

Cassandra de Mercedes

I am profoundly blessed in that I knew from a very young age what I was called to do with my life. I can remember being in my favorite Winnie the Pooh dress with a big green bow at the neckline and my favorite shiny blue shoes, seeing my mom come home from a performance with her stage makeup still on and still dressed in her costume, dancing around her bedroom, still high from the energy of a show. Read more>>

David Carrillo AKA Silencer

At first I was just doing music for fun. I was recording music in my room. Nothing professional, just a microphone, 2 tape decks and a mixer. I was recording them on cassette tapes. I kept practicing and was getting better. After a while I finally decided to give out a few cassette tapes I recorded and the response that I got back was very good. At that moment I knew that I wanted to do music professionally. Read more>>

Travis Vermilye

There were a number of experiences growing up that added to my desire to want to pursue a creative path as a professional career. As a kid, my parents were both creative people. My mom would sit and color with me often in my Batman coloring books and I’ll always remember that as our special time together. She is an amazing seamstress and created costumes for me and my brothers almost every Halloween. Read more>>

charlotte martin

I grew up with parents who were both professional gigging musicians, as well as both music teachers but in different sectors. My dad taught collegiate woodwind for 53 years where I went to school and played the tenor sax out in a professional jazz band. My mom had a degree in voice and piano from Southern Illinois University and taught choir and K-12 music for 12 years in Oregon before she met my dad. Read more>>

Dana Mosley

I have always loved decorating, DIY projects, all things crafty and just jumping in and trying new projects that require some sort of paint or resin to power tools and sanding. I remember having a very good job that could give me amazing growth and income. How exciting, but I knew with all that opportunity, it wasn’t going to fulfill that inner love I always kept on the sideline. So, I stayed with the company but decided to step into another position, activities director. Read more>>

MUSZ

As the founders of MUSZ, Salih Zeki Sayar & Murat Sener have different business backgrounds. Salih Zeki started his career in the finance sector. During his twenty-year career in finance, he also attended sculpture, photography and ceramic workshops. Murat worked in the advertising sector as a copy writer and creative director. When they met at some point in their careers, they both decided to join their creative forces to make their dreams come true. Read more>>

Kit Lively

I realized that I wanted to write and draw humor before I even knew that was something that one could do; I just knew that I wanted to be someone who created comedy. So I began making my own humor comics at around the age of eight, after having become obsessed with MAD magazine. These comics I was making were very bad, but c’mon, I was eight years old! Read more>>

Valery Day

When I first knew I wanted to pursue a artist path is when I recorded my first song when I was 17 years old. It was such a relief from all of the sounds and words I had running around in my mind, I knew it was nothing else as sweet as being a creative artist. Read more>>

Amanda Barbarito

As a child I was always drawing, but it was in high school that I decided that was what I was going to pursue art in college. I had found that creating art was a way I could express my feelings and work through depression and anxiety. My home life was tumultuous. Read more>>