Often there is no book or course to learn how to do what you want to do – so how artists and creatives overcome such challenges? How have some of the most talented artists and creatives in the community managed to learn their craft?

Prin$e William

Growing up in the 90’s I listened to a lot of Biggie Smalls and 2pac.My parents would never let me listen to explicit versions.I never knew I wanted to rap and make music until I was 21.As a kid I would sneak and stay up on school nights to rap over instrumentals for fun. Read more>>

Tom Gault

In the very beginning of my journey in high school, I had an older friend that introduced me to cameras, tech, editing,…etc. And for several years we worked together growing his local production company in Tennessee as a small team of creatives. It was always just fun for me and I had no plans of choosing this as a career path. I learned by watching others, the same way then as I do now. Read more>>

Abbey Letizia

As an editor, you need to understand story. What is this film really about? How do I portray the subtext, or the underlining meaning? Editing isn’t about stringing together images that look pretty, but about telling a story, engaging an audience and bringing up emotion. Read more>>

Pàppa D.

I love hearing stories of how people got started to do what they do, the hours they spent on it, how did they do it, the whole process seems extremely fascinating to me. I think it’s very personal and individual, and funny enough, i don’t think i ever shared how it happened for me. This seems like the perfect opportunity to do so. Read more>>

Jyshoun Sings

When I first started people use to laugh at me. I couldn’t hear what they were hearing. All I could hear was me getting better. I locked myself in a room everyday after school and sung everything I heard. My goal at the time was to better than the people that laughed at me. Read more>>

Mary Sanders

It took a lot of research and trial and error to learn the process of pressing flowers. Some are simple, while most need to be taken apart and pressed. The rose is a flower I frequently come across, and it requires multiple steps to be pressed. First, the flower petals are put one by one into the press. Read more>>

Stuart Heir

I started as a Photographer’s Assistant at 18 years old In NYC after trying college for a year. For the next five years I worked in various well known studios and at 23 started my own successful Advertising studio in NYC. I continued this for the next 32 years and was itching for a more creative outlet as the world of Photography turned digital. Read more>>

John Thomas Gauthier

Starting out professionally about a decade ago, I thought (naively) that being an actor alone was enough. Waiting on auditions, going to classes, refining the art of the performance, etc. I was doing well enough, being type cast as the big guy in various projects. It wasn’t really until the pandemic hit in late 2019 that I realized I needed more layers. Read more>>

Jasiel Louison

I grew up in Trinidad, where filmmaking wasn’t a big part of our culture. It wasn’t something I even considered as a career path. We didn’t go to movie theaters to watch blockbusters, so filmmaking never crossed my mind as a creative outlet. Read more>>

Chance Dunlap

My Dad always made stuff. He made knives, birdhouses, and other things. He would also figure out how to fix just about anything. I grew up around that. I liked getting tools for Christmas. The roots of my work are from my childhood. I learned welding in metal shop and ag classes in high school. Read more>>

Lacy Porath

When I began learning calligraphy and letterpress printing, I remember having a clear end goal in mind. I wanted to be the best. I wanted to know it all. I just wanted to be successful. But as I look back on the past 7-years of making a hobby into a full-time job and business, I am reminded there is no end goal. Read more>>

Jessica Alexander

I first developed an interest in photography at art school when I started photographing people as a reference for portrait painting. It wasn’t long before I realized that photography was a path I wanted to explore further so I applied to study it at degree level. Studying the craft at university was great but it was when I moved to London and started assisting that I really learnt the skills needed to be a professional photographer. Read more>>

Deborah Espinosa

I am an artist of many mediums, for the past 9 years I have been an aerial circus artist. Now as I am entering my early 30’s I have been drawn back to my first interest as a career, a tattoo artist. When I was 15 I asked my mom to buy me a tattoo machine, with the promise that if she did, I would not get any tattoos myself. Sure enough, that Christmas I got it. Read more>>

Chandler Arthur

I came from a creative family! Many of my father’s siblings dabbled in art and had a lot of experience in different mediums, so I was always a little curious about what they did. I always doodled as well so once I was offered art supplies, I started delving into drawing and painting. My parents were really supportive of my creative interests, and my father introduced me to other forms of creating, like SketchUp and CAD. Read more>>

Owenq Conway

I studied Acting at Stella Adler in Hollywood. The basic philosophy behind Adler’s technique is a dedication to the text and using one’s imagination to find what it is about the circumstances of the story that move you to act. Put simply, it’s about the character, not the actor. Stella said that an actor doesn’t look for themselves in the art, but the art in themselves. Read more>>

Emily Caffrey

I’m a self-taught wood burner, so my process has always been trial and error (or should I say “trial by fire”). I’ve always had a talent for drawing, but it didn’t give me the total satisfaction that wood burning has. It’s almost like drawing with fire! Because it’s such a unique medium, I got hooked. It combined drawing with the extra pizazz I was looking for. Read more>>

Michael Young

I’ve always been drawn to creative stuff, and I’ve learned that I need creativity in my life. Of all the creative things I’ve pursued, photography checks off the most boxes: it allows for collaboration, it’s of service to others, and it scratches my creative itch. Read more>>

Ego

Luckily I had lots of people in my corner helping me when I decided to get serious about music. I had previously been in a relationship that didn’t really allow me to express myself creatively; so not only did I have to learn all the ins and out of production, but I had to learn the ins and outs of who I was, and why I was making music in the first place. It was all very new to me. Read more>>

Belinda Del Pesco

I started making art as a youngster – doodling in the margins of homework, and sketching in notebooks because it made me feel calm and focused. I loved art classes in high school, and dreamed about becoming an artist, but I was encouraged to pursue a career with a regular paycheck instead. Read more>>

Bethany Mabee

I grew up feeling like a “good” artist because I could take an object and depict it realistically. My parents persuaded me to major in Graphic Design because it would lead to a “real job” that a fine art major couldn’t. But Graphic Design only enforced the technical and controlled side of me that I had such an urge to explore myself out of. Read more>>

Marcel Ferrin

I think Acting is such a unique craft, because there are 1000 different ways to go about it and there is no right way. Many acting professors or teachers have their own style of Acting and I think actors should be encouraged to learn as many as they can and see what technique or style best benefits them. I think an important thing for an actor to do is to live their personal life to the fullest. Read more>>

Sean Perry

Growing up, I loved music intrinsically. It’s always been a part of me; however, as I got older and began to invest more time into my daily practice routine, I began experiencing pain. It primarily was centered in my left hand, but also in my upper back and neck. Read more>>

Yuhan Yeh

I started piano at the age of 5 in my hometown, Tainan, Taiwan. I remember watching my older brother sitting in front of a big square box (back then we had an upright Yamaha), doing mysterious tricks with his fingers. “It’s magic!!” I thought to myself when some foreign yet lovely tunes flowed in the air. A new desire grew in me – I wanted to create beautiful sounds out of this box as well. Read more>>

Kali and Janée Marie Meadows

We are lifelong learners. Why stop? There is never a point where we think, “shut the book on that. No more to learn.” We love doing it all. Creating worlds. So the craft for us goes in so many directions. There’s improv, character work, comedic characters, dramatic characters, writing, editing, filming, animating, learning to color grade, learning how to build sets, making clams squirt out of the ground. Read more>>

Jeremya Ritchwood

If I’m being completely honest, I learned about baking and cake decorating from watching the Food Network and YouTube videos. As a teenager, I wasn’t really into popular TV shows. I always turned to the Food Network and watched shows like Cake Boss and Cake Wars. Read more>>

Grant Maloy Smith

In my world, I have to write songs, create various arrangements of those songs, record them, then go out and perform them in front of audiences. For me, the creation of the songs themselves is the most essential part of the entire process. When I was younger I would get an idea for a song and then write it as quickly as possible. Read more>>

F R E Y C U S

[Chuck] I can honestly say I’ve developed this craft through my life experiences. I mean, you can just go to YouTube, look up a “how to” video and go from there; but to me, I incorporate a lot of my emotions and visual imagination when creating and understanding the craft that I’ve acquired. I like to write music that not only defines meaning and depth, but also send the audience into a trance when they listen to our music with their eyes closed. Read more>>

M.C. Vaughan

Writing novels requires a mix of persistence, talent, community, and audacious confidence. Read more>>

Austin B. Sweeney

It’s been a long journey of learning and unlearning. There are many aspects of the craft. I made the dangerous decision to commit to three different disciplines: songwriting, singing, and guitar playing. Read more>>