I was born in a wasteland, really.I mean, that's how most people would describe it-- a weapons testing facility in the Mojave desert called China Lake. My father was an engineer and computer scientist for the Department of Defense; he helped create the Sidewinder missile. It helped that I had an overactive imagination as a kid, because there really wasn't much to do. We played in the desert, dug holes, built forts out of tumbleweeds and old pieces of scrap wood. We filled the blank world around us with our own inner thoughts and loves. This was good practice for my later work as an artist, but at the time I had trouble seeing the point. I wanted the world to be more interesting than it was. -- Devin O'Neill Read More

I've always wanted to be a part of a movement. It's been a huge focus for me. It's something to do with being among a group of peers who are focused on the same thing, or perhaps it's just being be a part of a creative journey with a collective. Even in life, if I find my soulmate, it's important for me to be with a creative partner. That's what I need. I can't be with someone who doesn't get me. The collective is everything. -- Garrett Markenson, Owner, Reverie by Garrett Markenson Read More

When I was a kid I was obsessed with stones and rocks. Just obsessed. And my mom was from Brazil and would go on trips there and come back with amethysts. I was so drawn to them. I didn’t understand the healing aspect of it back then but it makes sense now when I think about what it does for you. The whole idea of art and spirituality and me being an artist and all that – it really didn’t click until years later. I didn’t set out to be an artist or a creative, I didn’t set out to be a jewelry designer.I just found my way there. -- Veronica Rose, Jewelry designer Read More

The trouble with being an actor is most of the time you feel powerless --- you’re always waiting for someone to give you work. I changed that: I get all my own work, I raise all the money. When I perform at Universities I try to talk about this – don’t wait for someone else to give you the job. You never know what door will open. Everybody has to find a way to make a living of course, but the thing about "following your bliss" is that you don’t always know what your bliss is. Sometimes you take a path you would never have expected to end up where you were meant to be. --- Ian Ruskin Actor, Activist, Playwright Read More

One of the women in the community gave me a copy of Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique" and I cried the whole way through. That big book. I read it every night. And my husband was concerned, you know? So...I told him what it meant to me, how hard it was for me to think about doing what I wanted to do, and how the author was explaining how things would open up for everybody if you weren't just…martyring yourself!It also explained about consumerism, and this business of staying home and finding eight different kinds of soaps to do your laundry with, because it was all about the marketplace trying to sell to women, so they could stay home and consume more…and that was really true! I was experiencing that! -- Patricia Lee Lewis Read More

I always had creative activities around me, but I didn't understand that it was "art". I thought that everyone made their own doll clothes, I assumed that everyone's parents gave them a corner of their studio. So my creative background started pretty young.Which I think is why I am where I am now – because I didn't have that "oh, should I be an artist or should I not be an artist?" question – I did have it when I was young, I think I was maybe six or seven, and I was sick of my parents being broke all the time, and I was like, "I'm gonna marry a doctor!" And my mom looks at me and goes, "would you really be happy being a housewife?" And I was like, "mmmm…no." So that was it. That was the decision. It took me like two minutes to figure out, nope, I'm a creative, I have to keep going. -- Hannah Ruskin Owner, Swell Spaces Read More

I was in my senior year of college, confused about where I was supposed to go, what I was supposed to do next. I began researching grad programs and found a bunch of programs in school counseling. I thought, wow, how cool would it be a presence in a school for students who were in the same shoes I was in high school --- following their parents, not necessarily staying true to themselves, but with nowhere to go to help them grow as a person. What if there was a presence like that in a school?How cool would that be? -- Ian Levy Educator, Hip-hop artist Read More

Phoebe Allen didn’t have her inspiration presented to her— she had to discover it. She grew up in a small town, but the internet, as with many of her generation, allowed her a window into the incredible potentialities of art, culture, and design. Once she found that inspiration, she followed it, with a tenacity and enthusiasm few adults match, through architecture, UX design, to Barnard College, Oslo, Norway, and beyond. With Phoebe, creation starts with a hunger for the new, and design with a deep feeling for how our spaces and experiences shape and affect us. Read More