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.

Tara Kesner

I left the full time corporate world when I was pregnant with my second daughter, to be a full time mom. By the time my third daughter was getting ready to start preschool, I started to worry about how to fulfill myself, and my life without children at home during the day. Looking for what I thought would be a new hobby, I revisited art, which I had enjoyed quite a bit in my youth. I thought I would start an Instagram page for my artistic journey, and by the time I had created about 5 works, Read more>>

Joshua Prince

I have always been drawn to making and representing my ideas into materials. This began in childhood having two parents that were both active artists/teachers. The challenge in this is trying to imagine a practical future for the thing that you are passionate about. Based on my experience as the child of artists I grappled with this idea into my early adult years choosing ultimately to study for a Bachelors degree in Economics and Spanish and abandon the idea of a fine arts education. Read more>>

Ashley Corbello

Most professional artists will tell you they loved making art from a very young age, that it was always their calling, but that was not me. I grew up in South Louisiana where there were not art classes in elementary and we spent most of our time outside riding horses or playing in fields. I remember when we moved to Missouri one of the school counselors asked me if I wanted to take art or music. To which I responded, “What kind of music?” and she said “Choir”. So I chose art, because marching band was the extent of my musical abilities at the time. Read more>>

Cerena Robertson

I recall being a five-year-old child in preschool, distracted by a teacher drawing a house during everyone’s free time. I was so invested, I couldn’t help but peer over her shoulder and watch her draw a house with the front and side showing as opposed to a triangle on top of a square being on the paper. I was so intrigued that I needed to do it myself but did not know how to draw a three-dimensional house. I ditched my Dr. Seuss for crayons and my mom’s printer paper (which she definitely did not say I could use up) to practice my shapes. Read more>>

Chloe Trent & Sydni Cunningham

Chloe Trent is an artist who got her BFA in Graphic Design and MBA in Business Management from the University of North Texas. Sydni Cunningham is a producer/ writer who earned her BFA in Broadcast Journalism with a concentration in Digital and Broadcast Media. Since their friendship started in middle school, they have loved anime, cartoons, storytelling, manga, and more. They both loved art and always enjoyed making doodles, with Chloe pursuing her passion by studying graphic design. Sydni said she discovered her love for writing when she learned about the joys of writing in grade school. Read more>>

Natalie Joly

I was always drawn to music as a young child. I was singing as soon as I could talk and started taking piano and guitar lessons at about 6 years old. I would come home from school every day and play music for hours just because I loved it and wanted to learn every song I loved. I had binders full of songs, ranging from The Beatles to Tom Petty and every single Taylor Swift song that had been released. I do remember a specific moment when I was about 11 years old when it hit me that I could actually “do music” as a job someday. Read more>>

Emily Stahl

It’s funny because looking back, I have always pursued creative endeavors throughout my life. Growing up, I would make different paper plate crafts with my siblings. In grade school, I made friendship bracelets and wanted to start a business selling them. In high school, I designed album artwork for a friend’s band, and did logos for super cheap to build my portfolio over the years. I never connected the dots about pursuing a career in this – until three years into college, when I found my passion for graphic design in the first design class I ever took. It ignited a fire inside of me and I haven’t given up since. Read more>>

B. Trenton

I’ve been singing for most of my life but never had a passion for it until I started finding my voice around my college years. I can’t remember the exact name of the class, it may have been Creative Writing, but my professor complimented a paper I’d written and mentioned I should consider taking writing more seriously. It was a confirmation I didn’t know I needed. Read more>>

Megan Palmer

I always joked to my parents when I was a teen, studying classical violin and playing chamber music, that I wanted to be in ‘a rock band.’ When I went away to college, the first thing I did was find a way to amplify my fiddle and join an Indigo Girls cover band. From that point on, I was hooked, playing in a variety of college ensembles, studying jazz violin, and eventually auditioning for my first rock band in Columbus, OH, ‘The Franklin County All-Stars.’ Read more>>

James C. Birdsong, Jr.

First and foremost, I want to personally thank the CanvasRebel / Voyage Feature family for providing this opportunity to share in this interview with your audience. I appreciate it very much. God has truly blessed me in my career related to the Gospel music industry and entertainment arena. I have shared my testimony on numerous media platforms throughout the country and abroad. My journey in the Gospel music industry did not begin professionally until I was a student at my alma mater, Fairfield High School in Fairfield, California. Read more>>

Alonzo Brown

I Wanted To Start Doing Music Because I Had A Vison For It , And A Lot Of Others Can Relate To Me Read more>>

Melissa Jackson

I first knew I wanted to take my love for design from a hobby to a business after I had my fourth child. I had always been a creative person. I started out in college as a Graphic Design major but later changed my major and graduated with a business degree. After working in retail and then sales for about 6 years, I had my first child and then decided to become a stay-at-home mom. I still loved creating and would find time to design in some way while raising my kids. Read more>>

Stephanie Parker

Let me start by saying that I’m a firm believer in God and that He has a purpose for every life. With that said, I modeled in my early 20s. But, it didn’t pan out and years later I became a cop. At the time, I was on desk duty due to my pregnancy but worked the desk assignment for years afterwards. One day, I had a very interesting conversation with one of our custodians where I told him that I was considering getting back into modeling. He actually encouraged me to do so saying that my eyes tell a story that the world needs to hear. Read more>>

Paige Redbird

I’ve always known I wanted to do something creative with my time. As a kid I spent my days making longswords from yard sticks and duct tape, or crafting paper dolls with moving joints. I’ve never not used art and creativity to augment reality where I felt it was needed, and it never occurred to me that creativity wasn’t an option. Read more>>

Molly Burgess

I’ve wanted to be an artist since at least preschool, probably even earlier. I still remember how I visualized myself as a future artist. I always had on a big billowy white smock and jaunty beret. I would be holding an oversized artists palette in one hand and and a paint brush in the other. I also had a thin mustache and goatee. The specificity of this makes me think it was probably cartoon related. Read more>>

Ron Seay

Right out of HIgh School is still was unaware what i really wanted to do in life. I convinced my mom to let me have a year at a regular job to think about what area i want to pursue. One year came and I knew i was on a deadline to make a decision. The first area was electronic engineer. I went to school for one year studying but soon realized how bored I was of the career path. I seen a commercial of Nossi College of Art and immediately knew this what i wanted. Read more>>

Harumo Sato

For as long as I can remember I have always had a passion for making things. While I did not have any artists within my family, I wanted to be an artist. My family and I had a complicated relationship. I was eager to find a way to be independent when I was a teenager. I tried a few different career paths to achieve financial independence, and I feel that I didn’t have the ability to take the risk to fully become an artist untilI simply couldn’t avoid it any longer. Read more>>

Maria Willison

When I was a kid I enjoyed making art but I wasn’t very serious about it (which I don’t think was a bad thing, it was part of “play”). When I headed to college to get a BA I was like “Well, I don’t like doing anything else yet so I’ll just be an art major and see if something else catches my interested.” Little did I know that I would start falling in love with art in a way that I didn’t know that was possible. I was enjoying my 2-D classes but at the end of sophomore year I took my first sculpture class and realized this is how I think, this is one aspect of how I express myself to the world, and this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. Read more>>

Angela Fromme

It was after I had my 3rd child. I had kind of lost myef in motherhood. I started painting again because it’s something I always naturally came back to. It was kind of without my permission. Organically I was inclined to grab a brush and paint something. People showed interest in my work and I sold a few things. It made me happy and so I knew I wanted to keep going to see what was possible. Read more>>

Trevor Turla

I have played music for most of my life but hadn’t considered it a career option until around 2008. I saw Wycliffe Gordon play with the Friends University big band in Wichita, KS. It changed my perspective on music. I had never realized how far music could go before that show. Afterwards, I knew pursuing sounds was something that I would want to do for the rest of my life. Read more>>

AngelTheStar

As a young girl, I would sing, all day everyday. My love for singing and music was apart of me at an early age. When I saw my older brother perform and sing and how he could always command the stage like Michaeal Jackson, I knew I could do that, if if that meant doing background for my brother one day, I was like, I can do that! It wasn’t until I got the gig, or opportunty of a lifetime, Read more>>

DJ Kamm

The first time I interviewed someone was in college and I knew from that point I wanted to write professionally. Growing up, writing was always a passion of mine along with music. When I went to college I majored in Journalism and had to take different writing and film production classes. During that time I had to interview many different people from our community, family members, and colleagues. I knew I had a passion for writing, but I never knew how much I would love interviewing people. Taking those classes made me realize how much I had a passion for this. Read more>>

Alxvnder Tha

I like to think I’ve been musically gifted since I was little. I used to hear songs just sing the melodies out loud over and over. I usually never forget where I hear a dope song for the first time, where I am or what I’m doing at that time, it never leaves me. Around March 2017, I was staying with a friend of mine and his dad on an air mattress. They let me have a spare room and I’d spend my nights watching videos of producers make beats on FL Studio, concerts, and a lot of No Jumper – those interviews used to have some of the best upcoming indie artists, of course I mean the “Soundcloud Rappers”. Read more>>

David Nasulme

The first time I truly knew I wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally was back in 2008/2009 when I recorded and released my first mixtape on DATPIFF.COM. I was 19 years old attending Georgia Gwinnett College after a failed attempt at a basketball career in South Carolina & music was the only thing that was giving me a sense of purpose. Music has always been a part of my life even before basketball but when things didn’t work out all it gave music the opportunity to take the forefront. Read more>>

Ca$ino Roulette

The first time I realized I wanted to pursue an artistic path was when my brothers and I tried to start a sing group like New Edition & we used to rehearse in the living room with our mother along with the dance moves and all! Read more>>

Tammy Reese

I began my career with The Media Unit’s TV and Stage Production Company when I was 12 years old. After watching so many horror, comedy and drama tv shows with my parents I began to act out so many characters that my parents knew I needed to pursue a career in acting. After auditioning for The Media Unit the rest was history. I was a member of The Media Unit for 8 years. In that time we would perform in over 60 live stage shows a year as well as produce a weekly tv program called “Rough Times Live” out of our public access tv station. Read more>>

Monteze Sutton

I have worked as an actor, singer, writer, and director for many years. I’ve been given opportunity after opportunity at a young age but sometimes it was hard because of my age. I started MSP productions to give people (especially younger people) of all ages the opportunity to perform on stage. Since our official launch on November 12, 2021 we have had many successful projects and have allowed space for all people to grow. Read more>>

Jessie V

The first time I knew was when I first seen 106and park on BET and that was 21 years ago Read more>>

Chris (Tracmuzik) Thomas

I knew I wanted to pursue being a music producer as a career when I realized I was great at mimicking other music I heard on the radio and albums when I was in 8th grade. My parents had a church with instruments, I played the drums since I was 3. My dad was a bass player and my mom played the keyboard. I had a huge interest in the music I was listening to, the different sounds that caught my attention. I started out copying other producers music just to challenge myself to see if could do exactly what they did. Read more>>

Chanelle Kazadi

I was always nervous on starting my own career because where I’m from you don’t see people making it out. I always loved music & was deeply inspired by it but the idea that it could be a career was far from my mind. I was really sports-focused for the first part of my life, but around 2017 I started hanging out more in creative circles. That made me want to step outside my confront zone and record my first song “Piano Heartbreak”. Read more>>

Ramil Ramillionaire Carr

At first I was just dressing up for the love of clothes At first I was just doing it for fun my friends and family were asked me for styling tips into style them, so we just all for fun . and I didn’t know it was lucrative until later around 2018 I started doing it professionally I started booking clients for styling gigs and then that’s what led me to influencing once I was posted on brands and I took it seriously I hired a photographer, and then brands started contacting me, asking me to influence their products and their clothing. Read more>>

Alexander Boyce

I’ve always felt that my calling had to do with the arts. I’ve always been a creative but high school is where I would say it was solidified. In high school, I was mostly quiet and sat at the back of the class but I particularly enjoyed anything that had to do with music or art. Read more>>

Liana Randolph

I’ve ALWAYS been creatively inclined. Apparently, when I was just a toddler I was dancing before I even started to walk (at least that’s what my mom says!) From then, I pursued dance as a child, always remained in the art extracurriculars for school and began to do theater during high school. However I definitely cite my sophomore year of college as the major turning point for me deciding to pursue the creative field heavily. Read more>>

Ray Wroten

So I was working in restaurants cooking and managing, right out of culinary school. I had played in bands just after high school but it wasn’t anything serious. I started working for a big corporation doing ice cream. It was awful, basically tell teenagers they were wearing the wrong hat or scooping too much ice cream. It was the worst because I wasn’t much older then them. I went on vacation to Hatteras with my family, every morning I’d wake up and watch the sunrise on the patio. Read more>>

Mariama Sallah

My last year as a culinary arts student I took an 8 week cake decorating course. My initial goal was to start making my daughter’s birthday cake. I was not confident enough to sell my cakes but as I got better I realized my passion is to make people happy on one of the most important days of their lives (their wedding day. I worked on elevating my skill set and now I primarily focus on over the top luxury wedding cakes. Read more>>

Presley & Taylor

As sisters, we grew up singing and performing together at school talent shows, church, and family gatherings. One year, as a Christmas gift, our parents brought us into the recording studio in our home state of Connecticut to sing a few songs. At 14 and 16 years old we were immediately bit by the bug. We have been writing, recording, and performing our music ever since. Read more>>

Mayah Dyson

Music and singing was a huge part of my child hood. I sang in church, participated in plays and musicals in my hometown, and I sang in my schools honors choirs growing up but I didn’t start taking my music career seriously until my junior year of high school. That’s when I found out about Berklee College of Music. I had been taking vocals lessons at the time. My vocal teacher told me about Berklee because that’s where she attended college. Read more>>

Murray Sease

I have always been enthralled with art and knew I wanted to do something creative with my life from childhood. I didn’t think I had any real talent to create “real art” though, so I studied, and got a degree in graphic design in college. With at least a toe in the door of the art world, I learned so much! Composition, color theory, some drawing skills. And through the years as a designer and creative director for local ad agencies and design firms. Read more>>

Katie Belle

Music has called to me from such a young age, in a way i’ve never imagined anything different. But also looking back at it and when i was a kid I was t conventional anyway. The way i dressed, how i acted for my age, even the way I imagined the world and my future. Sometimes i feel like i chose music, but i know music also chose me. Read more>>

Kristi Van Zyl

In 2012, I was working full time in the corporate world as a mortgage consultant. At home, I began painting a few pieces of our furniture, to give them a fresh, new update. It was such a refreshing change from the stress of the corporate world and I fell in love with the hobby and the outcome of each piece! Read more>>

Ashley Carter

I still remember being a teenager and being enthralled by fashion magazines. Growing up in a small town in North Carolina, I’d never seen the fashion displayed in these magazines in real life. I loved the way the editors captured words so beautifully about the people in the images and how the stylists created such amazing looks. I knew at my age and being in a single parent household, I couldn’t have the exact things to create those looks, but I could use my imagination to create looks inspired by the images. Read more>>

Paul Manning

Since a child I was always enamored with visual art. My grad father was a notable local Baltimore jazz musician. His instrument was the stand-up bass. My grand mother was a budding actress who frequented the esteemed Arena Players acing guild and playhouse. My childhood was immersed in music and creativity. My grandfather was my role model; I’ve always had aspirations of embodying his personality and style. Read more>>

Louie Salvador

I think as soon as I started school as a child, I knew I was an artist. Art was a focus even before that because of the way it was celebrated in my family. All forms too. I was sketching and creating as early as I can remember, you could even say my first logo design was writing “mom” using French fry grease at a McDonalds when I was like 2. Read more>>

Jean McGuire

I grew up wanting to be an artist. However, for my generation, this was not a dream that was deemed very practical. The first expectation was that I would marry and be supported by a husband, the second expectation was that is I failed in the first, I would take a practical job. The job choices that I was offered were secretary, teacher, or nurse. None of these interested me, so I fell back on the first expectation. Over 40 years later I returned to my art and I haven’t looked back since. I truly feel like my first love came back to me when art came back into my world. Read more>>

Slayvannah Davis

The first time I knew I wanted to pursue music was when I was about 6 or 7. One of my friends who lived on my block (and whose family was rich as hell) had this keyboard in his bedroom and I’d never seen one that wasn’t a kids toy– this was like…a big kids toy. I would always go over to his house to hang out with him (his keyboard) and we would experiment with different sounds and beats. I remember there was this one sound that I thought sounded like outer space and we would f*ck around with that and put it over some of the pre-programmed beats and it was one of the coolest things to me at the time. Read more>>

Pendrick

I’ve always had musical ideas in my head and played drums in church and school and growing up, but I didn’t know exactly how to turn my passion into an actual career. after high school I joined the ARMY with hopes of joining the army band but I never did get into the music Side of the military because instead of being in the band, they made me an infantryman. which is pretty much the frontline fighter and honestly I hated it .  Read more>>