We asked some of the most creative folks we know to open up to us about why they chose a creative career path. Check out their responses below.

Aria Summer Wallace

I’m one of those lucky people that has always known exactly what I wanted to do. I was singing before I could speak full sentences and I was begging my mom to put me in acting classes at five years old. Performing and creative arts have always ignited something special inside me that’s impossible to describe and I’ve gripped pretty tightly to that my entire life. For that reason the work I do, even in the most unglamorous of moments, has never felt like a job and I’m simply grateful to have the opportunity to explore my art in new ways every day. I’m someone who views passion as not only a quality we possess or an emotion we feel, but an unignorable driving force. So when something calls to us that makes our souls feel alive, it’s up to us to listen and follow that intuitively with the fire in our hearts. In that sense, I don’t view the career path I’ve chosen as optional – I feel it’s what I came here for. Read more>>

Meghan Reker

I’ve always been visually inclined and creative, spending much time making things with my hands. Pursuing an art career felt like a natural choice. I attended art school in San Francisco, where I immersed myself in a wide range of studio arts while focusing on painting. I also studied art history, critical theory, and contemporary conceptual art, which helped me develop technical skills, expand my creative thinking, and explore diverse approaches to art from international perspectives. Read more>>

Jocelyn Frenkel | Creator/Owner of Sugar & Salt

I was an ADHD kid who always had a lot of energy, imagination, and had to keep my hands occupied at all times. Whether it be my interests in my chem. lab, home ec. type activities, or cutting the hair of dolls I wasn’t supposed to, I was always fidgeting and physically making things. So when I discovered my interests in gorgeously designed, but practical beauty products and crafts (thanks Pinterest!), I became inspired to start trying these methods on my own. Before I knew it, I was designing my own smell profiles for soaps, finding the perfect mix of ingredients for just the right melting temperature of lotions, and making necklaces and other trinkets. After a few months, I realized I was coming up with and making way more things than I needed or could possibly use. However, I was loving what I was doing and just kept on creating new things, so I decided to start selling them rather than have to choose between stopping or bankrupting myself. Read more>>

Eric Brown | Photographer

I studied dance throughout my teen years, but I initially chose to follow a more “sensible” path to meet my parents’ expectations. I enrolled in university to pursue a career in accounting. However, after just a year, I realized that a traditional job would leave me deeply unfulfilled. This realization led me back to my passion for the arts, and I decided to pursue a career in classical ballet. When my dancing career came to an end, I discovered a love for film and spent about ten years in video production. After immigrating to the United States, I found myself drawn to photography, which has become an all-consuming passion. Read more>>

Jamie Barnard | Embroiderer, Graphic Artist and Digital Printer

Initially, I didn’t. I actually fell into running commercial embroidery machines as just a regular college job. Over time I realized how much I actually enjoyed what I was doing and found meaning in creating in life what others have created graphically on a computer or in a sketchbook. I think growing up, I had always craved a certain creative outlet but I never found the medium that really felt right until I started embroidering. Over time, I was given the means to start learning other 2D to 3D arts like screen printing and UV printing and it still excites me today as much as it did when I first started learning, to see something that I’ve created bring a sort of joy to those we create for. Read more>>

Lia Walker | Artist

For me, being an artist and seeing life the way I see it cannot be separated. I experience and identify with being an artist to my core. My being an artist is affirmed and outwardly expressed by creating my work. When I get asked this question the answer is so simple to me: I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. Read more>>

Dorathea Deforest | Cinematographer

I got a degree in engineering. I didn’t know what I wanted to do in high school but I was good at math so my parents pushed me towards a sensible career where I wouldn’t have a hard time getting a stable, well-paying job. Even as a freshman I knew that wasn’t really what I wanted, but I figured that I would get the engineering degree, get a good job for a few years, make some money, and then I’d have the freedom to do what I wanted and the time to figure out what that would be. By my junior year I had realized that I never wanted to work a single day as an engineer. I had also figured out in that time that I had a strong interest in cinematography and film making that I wanted to pursue. I finished the degree, but in the last year I was also enrolled in film school. I had at least a few people tell me that I wouldn’t be successful in an artistic career, but I came to understand that there was no way I was going to be successful trying to do something I had no passion or interest in doing. Read more>>

Zach Bauer | Artist, Creator, Designer

I’d never seen any other walk of life as desirable or a good fit for my energetic personality. The pursuit of creativity is instilled in every thing I do. Read more>>

Marin (noelle) Sorrentino | Professional Wrestler

Originally, it was out of spite. I was 13 sitting in a Chinese restaurant when I decided to become a pro wrestler, it was because of a snide remark my uncle had made about my 8 year old fantasy of one day headlining WrestleMania. It was in that moment everything I did (for better or for worse) was for wrestling. I got a job as soon as I could, saved pennies and quarters. The farther I went the less it became about the faithful day in the Chinese restaurant and the more and more it became about proving to myself that I could do hard things. I wanted to purse it not only because I loved it because I wanted to prove that I could. To myself and others Read more>>

Brynn Bunker | Writer & Artist

I chose an artistic career path mainly because its always called to me more than a normal work path. Being inspired by life cycles has helped me in my creative endeavors more than I’d ever be able to be inspired by going to college classes or trying to follow a more “normal” path. Being creative is the only way I can live. Read more>>

Jessica Berdiales | Artist & Tattoo artist

It’s the only thing I was ever good at. I wasn’t the brightest kid growing up with two foreign parents at home speaking Russian, Spanish, and broken English I felt like I could never understand anything especially when it came to school. The one thing I was good at was painting with Bob Ross at home while he aird on PBS. Anything creative I was good at. Painting, sewing, sculpting, playing musical instruments. It made sense in my head because words did not. Read more>>

Kat Perdue | .Artist

I have always been the kind of person that becomes bored if I am not using my imagination. I first started out as a floral designer and from there I became an interior decorator and now I am a full time artist. I can truly enjoy using my creativity to the fullest as an artist that works with mixed media and collage style acrylics on canvas. I enjoy using antique postcards, photos, letters, etc. whatever I can get my hands on that I feel will bring interest in to my paintings. I feel such fulfillment when I finish a painting especially when the person that selects a certain painting appreciates all the hard work that went in to creating it. Read more>>