We asked some insanely talented artists, creatives and makers to tell us about when they know they were going to pursue a creative career.

Therese Myers

I always knew I wanted to create change and impact young people. When I was very young I knew there was something special about being a teacher. I would dream of being in a classroom and helping to shape young minds. As I grew older I never gave up that dream. Life would begin to shape itself and teaching in a formal classroom would be delayed. Read more>>

Lex Artxel

I knew I wanted to pursue art professionally when I realized that it was the only thing that made me happy & at peace. Up until I started painting I didn’t cope with issues in the most positive & even healthiest way. Painting became my get away, I could paint for hours straight and found joy in the process from start to finish. Read more>>

Ashton Brooke Gill

I always knew I loved singing and playing music. I grew up in the small town of Livingston, Louisiana. I sang and performed in The Livingston Parish Talented Music and Theater programs and in my local church. My family was musical and it was always something that I just loved. Fast forward to college, I decided last minute that I would audition for American Idol. I figured the worst that could happen was they tell me no and I just finish nursing school. But, they actually gave me a yes. After that experience, I knew I wanted to pursue a career in music. Read more>>

Ethan Granger

I began playing music when I was in 6th grade. My my mom played piano and my dad was the worship pastor at our church so music and the church had always been a huge part of our family. When I was in 6th grade about 7 guys ranging from 4th through 6th grade with the help of my parents started a band called “Firm Foundation”. Our church was only a few years old at the time because we were a new church plant so Firm Foundation became the churches first youth band. Read more>>

Kim Matthews

I think I was four when I realized I wanted to be an artist when I grew up. I have some very distant yet potent memory of getting praise for my drawings in kindergarten or first grade. I got attention for my artwork all through school; I still remember the thrill of seeing my drawings hung in the hallway. When I was in high school my art teacher decided our school needed a scholarship for students planning to study art. Read more>>

Melissa Misoda

This is a great question. I am actually a terrible artist. Haha. Seriously though, when I was in school being a good artist meant being good at drawing, and I never felt like I could draw so I actually shied away from taking any art classes. After starting community college and bouncing around from major to major and not really finding anything I felt passionate about, I randomly signed up to take a glassblowing class. Read more>>

Trustfall Collaborations

It always goes back to the music. I grew up in a multicultural environment and often felt like I was in a constant, chaotic spin cycle of learning to have genuine human connection despite a diverse background of all my interactions. At a very young age I started to notice something I believed to be nothing less than magical. How could a room full of people with different days, backgrounds, stories, etc. Read more>>

Lucy Pike

I had always loved art and creating things and, in my 20s, I often painted pieces for my own house or friends and family, made over furniture, experimented with collage, and other creative endeavors. But I had *always* been a writer, even as a child. I mostly wrote freelance articles for blogs and did some editing while I worked on my own personal writing in my spare time. But when I became a mother, writing slowly started to feel heavy and unnatural; the emotions and experiences were not translating to the page for me. Read more>>

Ms. TROY FAYOLA

The first time I knew I wanted to pursue my music career professionally dates back to my college years in 2014. I was consistent with writing music and songs, performing open mic and live shows during my college years. After I graduated from college, my alma mater, Michigan State University, invited me back to headline one of the major showcases on campus with Houston’s Hip Hop Artist Tobe Nwigwe. Read more>>

Lin Hult

Growing up as an only child up pre-internet I was left with a lot of time for introspection…for reading…and for using my imagination. When I was at the Cape with my Dad I spent a lot of time in nature…nature has always been, and still is, my sacred space. My time in the city with my Mom, when not in school, was spent reading books from the library – Emerson, Thoreau, etc and my black hardcover Funk and Wagnell’s Dictionary, a gift from my Farmour which was my prized possession at the time. I read it every night. Read more>>

Tracie Frank

I think I always knew I wanted to be a performer. When I was about three or four years old, I was watching Sesame Street. I remember asking my mom, “How can I go to Sesame Street?” (I know, sounds like the theme song!) I didn’t have the language to explain that it wasn’t just because the puppets were magical. There were kids like me inside my television, and I wanted do what they were doing. Read more>>

Antonio McGaha

Though I have been around music most of my life, it was not until the mid 2000’s that I decided to take my artistry more seriously. I grew up in a household with parents who are both accomplished musicians, singing and playing drums in choirs and in gospel quartets. My family and I spent a great deal of time singing together in the local churches as well as in weddings and other special occasions. Read more>>

Joey Gonyea

I would have to say I’ve wanted to pursue some form of art as a career back when I was in junior high. Art has always resonated with me since as far back as I can remember. Everything else I tried just never felt right, and then when I was a young kid seeing tattoos on adults just blew my mind. I thought it was the coolest thing ever to have all these permanent designs put on your body. And at the time I first saw any type of tattoo I knew then that is what I wanted to do with my life. Read more>>

Nathaniel Brumett

Why does anyone pursue art. A creative mind is met with inexplicable feeling. So vast, so ferocious an experience, the subconcious needs to pour itself onto an existant plane. Regardless of emotional origin, we create beauty from the deepest reaches of our soul. It isn’t sought after success, its necessity. To be understood, to learn, to display the faint enigma that is purpose. Read more>>

Fangyu Ma

The first time I decided to become an illustrator and embark on a career path was in the summer of my junior year, but the story starts when I first enrolled in the program. My undergraduate major was interior design under the Department of Architecture, but I didn’t have any concept or idea about architecture before I enrolled, so I didn’t have any sense of belonging during the first two years of my professional foundation study, and I always watched my classmates talking enthusiastically about their designs and ideas during every presentation. Read more>>

Randy Rochford

Oh boy, do I have a funny story for you! The year is 2006, I’m nine or ten years old, and I’m sitting on the floor of Mrs. Pacillo’s classroom with the rest of my noisy second-grade classmates for career day. I’m excited, my palms are sweating, and my heart is pounding with anticipation because I had previously found out that a veterinarian from my hometown (Strasburg, Colorado) will be presenting to the class and answering some questions about their field of work. Read more>>

Mel Middleton

I think many creatives start with the same story, that the spark was there from an early age. It’s no different for me. I was always drawing, arranging spaces, creating imaginary rooms in the forest, solving puzzles, photographing. Art was always my favorite subject in school, but so was math. So when the discussions about what career do you want to pursue started, being an artist was not really an option for me. Read more>>

Mitch Meseke

I’ve always considered myself an artist, even at an early age, and knew that art was something I wanted to pursue as a way of life, but I suppose it wasn’t until I turned down a scholarship at a fine art school to attend a technical art institute for computer animation and multimedia was when I took that path seriously. My thoughts at the time were, how would I make a living as a painter? Read more>>

Ashley Tate

As a young child, I recall sitting in my room imagining a sold out venue, hearing the applause of a captivated audience reveling in the performance of my dancers. I would create for hours, not realizing that this was the foundation upon which I would become an artist. Dance movement was the vehicle for which I made sense of my immediate world, both emotionally and socially. I learned at an early age that dance was more than a hobby, it was my life. Read more>>

Justin Groom

I remember in elementary school seeing some kids setting up STAR WARS figurines and creating stop-motion animation videos and just thinking that was the coolest thing. I knew I wanted to do something creative, so started drawing – I made pages of stick-figure battles. Read more>>

Benen Dykstra

I’ve always wanted to pursue an artistic career since I was an eight-year-old watching pro wrestling Friday Night Smackdown on the Score channeI. I remember amazing wrestlers like Kurt Angle, a man who won an olympic gold medal with a broken neck; The Undertaker, a man who wrestled and entertained around the world for thirty years and CM Punk, a wrestler who dyed his hair different colours, had tattoos and became a world champion despite not having the look or, size that most promotions sought after. Read more>>

Rebecca Habing

I was working as a Registered Nurse in labor, delivery and postpartum since 2008, and while I really loved my work, the longer I spent in healthcare, the more I missed my artistic side. Prior to becoming a nurse, I painted, drew, loved photography; but full-time nursing left little energy for art. I had never considered tattooing as a potential hobby or profession, as my only awareness of the industry was the rather toxic and intimidating white male-dominated side that I’d experienced first-hand as a young client. Read more>>

Pamela Tomlin

I guess I have always been creative and I get from my family. My great grandfather had a slew of vaudeville theaters – my grandmother was artistic and so was my mother. From a young age I loved singing and dancing… and studied theater at Rollins college. After school I got into TV and became a successful producer and traveled all over the world doing all kinds of stories. And my husband is a TV producer – yes I married my boss – lol. Read more>>

Ashley Jeter

I started drawing at the age of two. My mother purchased a desk that had a light on it, and you could trace whatever you wanted. I started there, and once I felt confident enough to draw with the tracing light my gift started to get better. After a while I was drawing Mickey mouse, goofy and other characters I could make up. I got noticed by my first grade teacher while doodling in class. She nominated me to draw the Christmas mural for the school Christmas program, my eyes lit up and that’s when I knew this was something I wanted to do when I was an adult. Read more>>

Eugene Ofori Agyei

I grew up in a country where there are access to few ceramic materials, equipment and no regard for ceramic art. I became the first in my family to study art in college making my way into graduate school in the United States to pursue my artistic career. One can only wonder why I still wanted to pursue the career of being an artist and now I understand from experience that the infinite possibilities are found when people are offered a place where they can shine fearlessly. Read more>>

Adaorah Chukwuemeka

Music has been always been an important part of my life. It’s gotten me through happy moments and hard times, but I didn’t realize I wanted to be a singer until my 11th birthday. My parents were huge on birthdays and this specific year I was allowed to invite 6 of my friends to go to Kiddie Land, my favorite amusement park in Chicago. While we were enjoying the rides and the sugar rush, I noticed there was a stage setup by Station B96, and they were asking the people to enter their talent content. Read more>>

Nimo(Linqian) Jiang

I think it was when I was 16 years old. I was attending a regular high school instead of an art high school, drawing every day after doing my homework and trying to keep a balance between school and art. When I received the questionnaire about my career and future direction, I started to think seriously about what I wanted to do in the future. Read more>>

Artist Love

I was 8 years old, mindlessly wandering through my home. I heard my mom calling me to watch a movie; Breakin’, a film of breakdance culture. The creation of an artist. Read more>>

Rory Odom

A quick summary of my journey into the arts began as a hobby or more to the point, a way to kill time. After high school i chose to serve in the US Marine Corps, where I spent a four and a half years of honorable service and got to see a little of the world. After discharging i chose to join the trades and began a welding career in both the industrial construction arena as well as the offshore drilling industry. Read more>>

Chelsea Cha Cha” Cantrell Counts “

The first time I knew I wanted to pursue my creative path professionally was in my sophomore year of college. I’ve always enjoyed mixing & piecing my clothes together; trying things other people wouldn’t dare wear & making sure my hairstyles and my outfits were on point, and while in college I was able to tap into it even more. Read more>>