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.

Ali Yahnke

Since I was a college student, I knew I didn’t want to follow a traditional career path. I was an intern during my college years at a design and marketing firm – and while I was creative in my job, the 9-5 hours left me wanting more time to be with my friends and family, explore my personal creative interests, be in the garden, and explore. Read more>>

Nichole Wileczek

Each creative business owner’s story on how they made their passion into a career is wildly different, but with other creatives as my own clients, I’ve learned that it is our passion in creativity that connects each and every one of us. As such, like many, I grew up with an inclination for the arts; from writing, to painting, to photography, and of course, to graphic design. Read more>>

Mike Da Ponte

From a very young age I always knew I wanted to do something in art, but when I was young I wasn’t entirely sure what that was. I always made an effort to learn many different processes in the creative realm which I think played to my advantage as I got older. In high school graphic design caught my attention because it was a process that helped me to think critically by using principles of design to really challenge my skills and help me adapt to a modern mindset of creativity. Read more>>

Mayson Honek

When I was little, my mom owned a mini digital camera and she would bring it everywhere and print out every photo she took. Till this day there is so many photos in bins and all over her wall that I look back on. While she wasn’t using the digital camera, I would take it and run around to anything I laid my eyes on. Being grown up, I created MaysonHphotography a Band and portrait photography business. Now i use my big kid camera running around the local scenes in Seattle, WA. Read more>>

Yveline Marie Molin

I had a lot of time to myself as a kid. Being the only girl in a household of three boys, made me feel like the only child sometimes. I consumed myself with fashion editorials and adventure novels. Any movie or tv show I watched, I created “What if’s” telling my own stories and thinking how I would’ve done this scene different or I would reenact a scene in the mirror and keep writings of my own stories and play the movie in my head. Read more>>

Luis Bermudez

I feel like I’ve always known that I wanted to have some hand in the story telling business, but I think the first time was after watching The Matrix. It seems funny now, but I didn’t just want to BE Neo, I wanted to live in that world. I wanted it to be real. Growing up in a household where our lives were less than ideal, where money was tight and the family environment tense, escaping to different realities was my coping mechanism. Read more>>

Sarai Middleton

In high school, I switched from JROTC to Art as my electives. It was the best decision I ever made. I found a passion for art and always knew that it was something I wanted to do as an occupation. I’ve been drawing and creating since a child, but during high school I unlocked the desire to pursue it professionally. And I’ve been working towards my goal ever since. I haven’t reached the level I’d like to be, but greater is coming! Read more>>

Ajit Matharu

I made the decision to be an artist early on, though the form and direction of the art has changed over and over. When I was still in grade school, I thought I wanted to be a professional jazz saxophonist. Then I fell in love with beatmaking and thought I wanted to be a hip hop producer. I soon found that most of my productions however gravitated to a faster tempo and “4 on the floor” percussion. This naturally led me to begin producing house and techno – music for the body and soul. Read more>>

Mwenzela Ndhlovu

It just happened! For as long as I can remember, I had always wanted to work in the creative industry. I recall one time when I was 10 years old looking in the mirror pretending to be speaking to my “subscribers” who at the time were non-existent. Read more>>

Madaline Collins

I was nineteen when I decided to start pursuing music on a more professional level, up until that point I’d only really been performing at open mic nights and playing small gigs on occasion. At that, I’m twenty-two now and still working very hard as an independent artist to try and make it a full time career. It is a wonderful challenge every day. Read more>>

A Lack of Champions

Personally, I (Shane…the guitarist/singer) first knew this when I was five years old in the late 1980s. I saw Kiss’s video for “I Love It Loud” with my sister and cousins and immediately wanted to be The Demon and make refrigerators and coffee cups explode! Read more>>

Alondra Puentes Gallegos

This is a hard question. The arts have always been part of my life, even as a child, and I never really thought I would pursue it professionally. I think I always knew I wanted to be an artist, yet never allowed myself to entertain the idea until I started working in different fields outside of the arts and realized how miserable I was. Read more>>

Deweese White

It happened when I realized I didn’t wanna work for anyone else, that I wanted to be my own boss, and enjoy what I was doing. That sparked a drive in me that made me want to do better for myself and do better for others. The reason I started my own business was because I was determined to shut all the haters up and everyone who said that I couldn’t do it. I’ve been doing it now for four years and Deweese White Designs is the best in the business. Read more>>

Juanita E. Mantz (JEM)

I knew I wanted to be a writer as a young girl. I learned to read at 3 and was reading novels in elementary school, and would imagine myself as one of the characters. As a kid, I would often daydream of being a novelist or a screenwriter. And yes, I forgot about my creativity for a while in my pursuit of a law degree, but I ended up being exactly what I always wanted to be. Read more>>

James Wolf

I would not say there was any specific ‘aha’ moment in my life when I knew I wanted to pursue photography professionally. I would say the moment I realized I wanted to pursue photography as a career would probably be when I recognized that a camera gave me the ability to capture people’s moments and freeze them into literal photographic memories with meaning and purpose. I have always had a passion for people and the story they hold. Read more>>

Ed Brussa

I was exposed to different musical genres from a very early age. My maternal grandmother was a professional lyric opera singer, and for as long as I can remember my father would always play British Invasion and folk rock records in our home, as well a cassette tapes (later CDs) on road trips. Growing up in Uruguay, I was also surrounded by local traditions like tango, milonga, and candombe. Read more>>

Montez Williams

I first realized I wanted to pursue my dreams was when I got released from prison and I wanted to stay out but they wouldn’t hire me. I knew all I had was my ideas from prison so I started working on them to survive and provide for myself Read more>>

Sylvie Cloutier

From early childhood, I knew it. I always wanted to draw, to do any kind of tinkering. My parents, with a musician as a mother and a father who accepted that we could take the professional path we wanted, I started to paint. My dad offered me a correspondence course FAMOUS ARTISTS SCHOOL, Westport, Connecticut, USA. Norman Rockwell was a prood representative of this great school. For 3 years, I ‘ve had an extraordinary story. So, it was the beginning !!!!!! Read more>>

Danny Marciano

I started writing songs and books to entertain other inmates or people in rehab. I had no idea that anything I ever wrote would be seen outside those walls. I would make costumes out of cardboard and write plays and get the other people to join in. We had nothing else to do and a lot of time. I wrote some letters and poems to my daughter that I had become estranged from. Read more>>

Erin Tufts Cartier

As a child I was always creating, making and drawing. I always knew I would take the creative path one day. Both of my grandmothers taught me how to sew. My fraternal grandmother would hem my Barbie’s dress super short and my maternal grandmother would take out the hem to make it longer. They were very different but both inspired me in ways I could never describe in words. I knew then I would create wether it be art, handbags or website for fellow small businesses, I enjoy every minute of it. Read more>>

Genesis Valenzuela

I’ve always wanted to pursue to creative/Artistic path. I remember being a child and at the age of 8 telling my parents that I wanted to be an Artist. My parents were first generation immigrants coming to the united states from the Dominican republic in search of a better life. At that time they didn’t really encourage my art career till they began to recognize that my mentors and teacher’s believed in mu dreams being tangible and encouraged my parents to enlist me in art programs. Read more>>

Keoni Coleman

I’ve ALWAYS been creating in some form from painting my moms walls with her lip stick or putting on outfits and parading around the house. I always painted or drew but I believe I first realized I wanted to pursue art watching cartoons and animations. Hayao Miyazaki’s story telling had a chokehold on me as a child. The ability to tell stories with so much color music and emotion was everything to me. I decided in Highschool that I would do animation. Read more>>

Maree Montagnini

I wrote a song once as a joke, “Never a Wrong Time (to write a sad song)”…. I set it to a happy, upbeat melody, which was my idea of a joke, because its a song about how music is often born in sadness. Because what I’ve learned, from my own experience and listening to those around me who are also musicians and writers, is that creation and the ability to create is often been of strong emotion, and one of the strongest, most life changing feelings is pain. “Life is pain, Highness…” to quote The Princess Bride. Read more>>

Maggie Mather

The first time I had my art publicly displayed was the moment I knew I wanted to be a professional artist. After my second term of grad school with the University of Denver’s Emergent Digital Practices program, I was invited to participate in a group show curated by Emilie Trice, a graduate of the program. Read more>>

Lonely Choir

I began pursuing a creative career about a year ago. I have always written songs on my own, but I never took it too seriously. A few friends of mine encouraged me to really consider pursuing it. It took a few people believing in me to finally give it a go. Read more>>

Jenna Jo

I feel like I’ve always known deep down that I would end up in the creative field somehow. Growing up, I was exceptional at math, but my passion always lay in music and writing. As I continued to go through school, I felt like both sides of myself were constantly at war. Do I do what I know I’m good at—the safe pick—what everyone around me wanted for me, or do I do what I love—the risky pick that I was consistently discouraged from? Read more>>

Wenpei Li

When I was thirteen, I realized I wanted to work in a creative field, but I wasn’t sure what that would be or what I wanted to create. At the time, I attended a painting class on weekends at a public middle school in China, where I immersed myself in the joy of painting. Read more>>

Mollie Krueger

I’ve always known I’ve wanted to pursue the performing arts professionally. At 3 years old, I would tell my mom I was coming with her to the hairdresser so that I could stand in front of everyone and sing and act out nursery rhymes. By the time I was in grade school, I started theatre which progressed into me starting on the path of writing my own music and being in bands in high school. I decided to go to Millikin University to further my education in music and that’s where we started The Hangovers. Read more>>

Brittany Hale and Megan Cardwell

We decided to really embrace our creative sides and shift the type of work we were doing, when our girls were born. We took a hard look at the type of work we were doing, what it was doing for the world around us, and the type of work/life balance we wanted to maintain in order to make sure our families are at the top of our priority lists. Read more>>

Kristen Collins

I was really ill with my autoimmune disease back in 2016 and I was thinking, man this can’t be the legacy that my kids will remember when I die. So, I sat down and really thought what would make me happy, and what would be something my kids would remember when I’m gone one day. Read more>>

JR McHenry

I decided to pursue a creative path professionally when I was at Tennessee State working on my Masters degree. As I was working on my degree, it became apparent to me that the field of my degree wasn’t the path I ultimately wanted to take in my life. I’ve always been creative and at the forefront of doing different things. Read more>>

Cheriyah King

Honestly I’ve always known that I wanted to pursue a career in dance. I just never knew it was attainable, until a couple years ago when I decided to attend a dance intensive in California that 100% kicked my ass in the best way possible. I went there with no consistent background of dance training, so easily I was unable to keep up in any of those classes. I felt extremely embarrassed and i even cried because I felt judged for it. Read more>>

Summer Brown

I first knew I wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path from a very young age. I always excelled in school artistically, I knew that was what I was good at, and felt that was my passion. After graduating with my M.F.A. in Museum Exhibition Planning & Design, the opportunities within the art field started opening up for me. Read more>>

Andrew Brantley

Although I had been playing guitar, singing, and writing songs for a few of my high-school years, inspiration for music really took hold of me around the age of 18. I was gearing up to leave for college, and I found myself in a profound stage of spiritual and mental growth. The passion I was feeling for music funneled into real goals. It dawned upon me that my purpose, at least for the foreseeable future, would be the pursuit of a musical career. Read more>>

CarieAnn Ochs

From childhood I knew that my interests were different. Different in a good artistic way. And that I always wanted to help people!! Those artistic endeavors were suppressed through my childhood, young adult, and into my adulthood. I did not have the best guidance and support growing up. And often felt trapped. I was told my way of thinking, or doing things were wrong. So with little to no appropriate support, little by little that side of me was tucked away for many years. Read more>>