Are artists born or made? To help answer this question, we asked some of the most artistic folks we know to tell us about how they knew they were going to pursue an artistic or creative path. We’ve shared highlights below.
Anthony Fyrefli” Gasaway
There comes a point in every creative’s lives where we hit an impasse between sacrificing our time, energy, focus and freedom to work a day job, and wanting that same level of aforementioned factors to dedicate to our passions. Read more>>
Sun Sensei
Growing up in my grandparents church, I’ve always took an interest in audio. I would record the services and set up the microphones. I’d even play around with the mixer board. Fast forward to around 14 years old, i taught myself how to play the piano. Read more>>
John Gummere
I think from the time I was a little kid, I imagined different careers and lives, but art was always the dominant one. My mother, Peggy Peplow Gummere, was well-known as a portrait painter around Trenton NJ, where I grew up. So art was woven into my daily life at home. I was the youngest of six kids and for whatever reason, I’m the one who most took on art as part of my identity. Read more>>
Mallory Sillavan
I’ve always loved art ever since I was little. I always wanted to be an artist, but I wasn’t aware it was a “professional” job at the time. Read more>>
Chris Burks
When I was young, at about 14, I always wanted to learn the process of figuring out how music “got on” CDs and things. A group of friends & I (late middle school, early high school) would write raps all of the time and I eventually established my path with my family and partners to where i was going from city to city with them on roadtrips or “tours” as they performed. Read more>>
Vision Magazine
Our women-comprised team has worked in the fashion and acting industries for many years. Our founder and Editor-in-Chief, Baily Roberts, has been a professional plus-sized model for over 6 years. She had personally experienced and witnessed discrimination in the fashion industry and wanted to be part of progressive change. Read more>>
Fatima Khambati
In 6th grade I participated in an art contest to draw a bird sketch. The winner would have their sketch printed as a greeting card. I was very excited and couldnt wait to submit my sketch that same evening. After a few days the news came that my sketch had been selected for the greeting card. Read more>>
Yiran Jia
When I was growing up, I always spent a lot of time drawing and I had been trained professionally. But I never thought of pursuing my career as a visual artist until I was 16 or 17 years old. I felt this anxiety about what I should do with my life about a year before I got into college. Read more>>
Kat Kasson
I was obsessed with Disneyland as a child, and still to this day, so we would often make the 6 hour drive from Phoenix, AZ to Anaheim, CA. On one of our trips, I was mesmerized by a wedding display in the window of The Grand Californian Hotel showcasing some of the services they offered. Read more>>
Davis Page
All my life I’ve been an entertainer. During the ages of 7-12 my life was filled with performances of song and dance in school talent shows. Middle school brought to life my love of music, listing to classic rock while learning to play guitar. All the while I was growing into myself, learning how to come out of my shell and taking any opportunity to be the class clown. Read more>>
Ernest Crim III
As early as I can remember, I have been an artist and creative. As a child, I was passionate about drawing, up until my teen years and even beyond that, I once created a movie with my friends in the 90s, and I loved music so much that I spent some time writing poems and raps as a form of expression in college. Rap allowed me to express my discontentment with racism. Read more>>
Greg Loebick
This is a pretty complex question for me. I’m assuming you all reached out to me because of my woodworking business, but I’ve actually been a creative professional for a long time. Read more>>
Dan Cohen
I got my first camera at 9 years old as a gift from my grandmother. The year was 1996, and the camera was an old Canon film series. Nothing like what you would see today. I began my creative journey by remaking music videos with my friends and family. Read more>>
Katie Michael
I have known that I’ve wanted to do something in the arts for the majority of my life. I was always an avid reader as a child, and loved picture books and chapter books and read as many as I could. My elementary school best friend and I co-wrote a book about our stuffed animals when we were in first grade, and I illustrated it. Read more>>
John Covelli
I was 10 years old when my parents’ friends asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, to which I responded “professional musician”. My dad followed me upstairs and asked me if I really wanted to do that, and I was pretty sure. He made it a point to explain how difficult that would be, not really telling me he didn’t want me to do it, but warning me that it would be a tough lifestyle. Read more>>
Damien Duque
I’ve always been a music lover since I was an infant, growing up with my family surrounded by music, seeing my father perform in bands, and always have tunes, and stories on top of my head that I’m anxious to create. I have been in and out learning the guitar throughout my childhood years and up to my early teenage years. Read more>>
Bianca Brandolino
So I actually realized that art – and specifically painting, was what I wanted to do when I was about eight years old. I was a pencil-in-hand kind of kid, always drawing on whatever I could get my hands on. Seeing this, my mom took me on a visit to the Art Institute of Chicago where I instantly became enamored with a Monet painting; one of his Haystacks series. Read more>>
Joey Dean
I can say for certain I’ve always felt like an outsider. I think that integral human experience conditioned a necessity to create. I believe artists are giant filtration systems. We are typically on the outskirts. We observe that which surrounds us—that which we do not feel connected to—and, in hopes to negotiate our existence in a world we do not feel like we belong to, we process that reality through art. We chew up and spit out the world to help make sense of it. Read more>>
Bee Nicole
I have been a creative since I was 7 years old. I was always an expressive kid. Since day one my two nicknames have been breezzee and smiley. It was a natural progression for my mother to find an activity that could nurture my charismatic expression. The start of my journey began when my mother signed me up at 7 years old to be a nj orator. Read more>>
Alice Trahant Phillips
Growing up as a multi-generational New Orleanian, my upbringing was all about creativity and culture. You absorb it from every city angle before you even realize that it’s become a part of you. New Orleans teaches you to not only be an individual, but to express yourself as an individual. Read more>>
Taylor Borton
I’ve always liked to sing, whether it was in the car or in my bedroom. I would buy a new cd any time I was able, just to sing along to. Throughout elementary school, I found myself always writing poems and stories. I started taking guitar lessons with the cheapest, little guitar my parents bought me at age 12. Read more>>
Ty Scott King
When I was eight years old two significant things happened that inspired me to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally: 1- A teacher heard me singing in the hallway at school and encouraged me to join chorus. 2- One of my sisters complimented me on a poem that I wrote. From there, I went to a school of the arts through the ninth grade. There were some detours that followed once I got to high school, but over the years, I was led back to pursing these passions. Read more>>
Cathy Havicon
I am an alum of GDYO, and as a child I used to see the staff hanging around during rehearsals. I never really knew what any of them did, except for the conductor. That was completely evident to me! Years later when I was in college, I had an assignment to interview someone in the music industry. Read more>>
Abby Shaner
I’ve always been far more creative over anything else. I love writing, creating, getting lost in music and art and truly am a person that works better alone. I was never great in school and just knew the world of college then corporate would not be something for me. Read more>>
DAVID RAGIN
When I was younger, I got bullied a lot at school. The only thing that made me feel better were cartoons and TV. Especially Kel Mitchell on Kenan & Kel. He always made me laugh and made me forget about my day. The way he made me feel. That’s how I wanted to make other people feel. Read more>>
Nova
Oh that’s a great question! I grew up in a very musically-inclined family where basically everyone in my immediate family can either sing, dance, play an instrument of some sort, or all of the above, haha. However, the moment I think it really clicked for me was when I was about 4 or 5 years old. Read more>>
Jantje Jensen
I have been an ‘art person’ my whole life and as a child thought I would eventually be a professional artist. I grew up pre-internet, in a time when being an artist wasn’t really promoted as a serious career in schools and there wasn’t really any direction in being an artist as a profession. Read more>>
Vanessa Agnes
The moment it became clear to me that my future was in the arts was after a moment of major uncertainty. I was finishing my high school career, touring colleges and trying to figure out what I wanted to major in. Read more>>
Yichun Xie
When I was about six or seven, I was reading a magazine and saw an illustration in it. At that time, I sensed the beauty directly from the picture, which was so shocking that I immediately wanted to draw something beautiful by myself. Read more>>
Drew Hale
I was the kind of kid that always got into trouble for being too loud, and too wild, and always having something to say. In fact my family nicknamed me Mr. Megaphone growing up. If there was a video camera, you can bet I was jumping in front of it pretending to be a “Roving Reporter” or a rock star with a guitar. Read more>>
Quincey Laroux
Ever since I was shown how to draw my first star, I knew that creating a visual medium of any sort was what I wanted to do in life. It didn’t matter if I was paid or not, as long as I had paint under my nails and ink splattered on my skin. For me, it’s about sharing my passion with others and doing so visually resonated. Read more>>
Mouse Rios
I’ve been writing rhymes and rapping since I was 10/11 years old. I used to get on my big old computer with no dial up. I used the computers built in recorder and an old cheap microphone that my Mom must’ve scavenged at the local goodwill. Read more>>
Thomas Snyder
Professionally? Maybe around 2014-2015. I was a Freshmen at The University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama where I met several other creatives whether producers, artists, photographers, videographers, etc. Read more>>
Suhair Alhaidary
I have always loved makeup, makeovers, and modern trends. Since I was a little girl, I knew I had a creative side, especially when it came to makeup and putting together looks. My sister and I would play make pretend, and I would always be the makeup artist. Read more>>
Andre Rashford
I always had an idea that I might be a full-time creative because the standard pathways being taught in school never fully appealed to me. I tried to be a computer engineer, I was fully committed too. But, it didn’t pan out because my heart wasn’t there once I started taking classes that were relative to it. Everything about being a creative just resonated with me more naturally even when I tried to escape it. Read more>>
Victoria Lartey
For as long as I can remember I’ve always been a “creative,” even before I knew what that title entailed. As a child I recall wanting to do everything under the sun. It started out with wanting to dance, then sing, then I had a long stint wanting to be a fashion designer, and then finally it was film. Read more>>
Co’Meh Shaw
I’ve always been excited about the arts in every aspect. From re-drawing celebrity signatures in middle school, to learning stunt work for theater, I wanted to dip my toe in every creative pond. I loved reading, specifically architectural magazines, the decor the plants and the colors blew me away. Read more>>
Joe Cunningham
I learned to play guitar when I got one for Christmas in my seventh year. It seemed almost as if it spoke to me and told me how to play, so I became pretty good fairly young. In fourth grade my teacher asked if I wanted to bring my guitar on the last school day of the year and play a song for the class. Read more>>
Matt McCallie
Music was never a choice; it has always been a core of my existence. Though my first memories were not musical, I do remember that within the first couple years of my life I felt a kismet. Listening to records was not enough for me, as my mother observed that while at a very early age, I was inclined to participate and correctly tapped complex rhythms on the floor in time with the music. Read more>>
Johnny Forte
If I’m thinking really hard about it I would assume when I got my first guitar in the seventh or eighth grade. Initially I still didn’t play the guitar for another 2 to 3 years. Well I’ll let one of my friends at the time borrow it and I didn’t see it for a while and then I did get it back just didn’t have the ambition to play or when I tried to it was like something was blocking my mind mentally or what not. Read more>>