 Research shows that people who are psychologically healthy and well-rounded and happy have some sort of creative hobby, every one of them. I was fortunate enough to have parents that my dad's an artist and they lived up in the woods and we were homeschooled which in those days really meant that we just got to do whatever we wanted but we didn't have TV so we rode horses because we grew up with horses and then we would draw or read or write or we had a piano so we'd play piano so we always had some sort of creative endeavor happening and my parents being an artist really valued that and instilled that value I'm really fortunate right now to be able to be full-time as an artist and that doesn't always happen and it isn't consistent it's running a small business and it's not easy In my work Color is always a driver I find that using lots of different kinds of materials and finding out what they'll do and how they'll respond is a big motivator to my studio practice I'm very prolific and I work kind of fast and so almost as an effort to slow myself down I figured out ways to do more and more meticulous work so that I can create these tiny, tiny details that are all juxtaposed together to create a whole piece Getting into flow takes practice so it takes a little while to find your zone I don't know if I'm really that good at it but I know what conditions to set up to get me into it faster so what happens is Color is one of those things that really gets me into this just blissful state I like to be cutting something, I like to be molding something I like to be building something and I like to mess around with materials like plastic toys, I've used glitter I've used ink, I've used eggshells I've used paint chips, I've used coffee I've used leaves, feathers I've used all sorts of things That's just this kind of native curiosity that I have I just kind of want to see what can I do to really push this material I'm really interested in doing landscapes out of plasticine and resin so I always start with a painting, usually just acrylic paint just to kind of roughen my palette, roughen my composition and then I start to put on the clay and the clay acts pretty much just like paint except it's denser and I work with it with my fingers instead of a brush and since color nuance is really important to me I'm always mixing the color which is a pleasure, that's my favorite part of making art and then after I get the sufficient amount of clay down then I'll put on a mold which would be like aluminum tape around the outsides and then I start doing layers of resin so that's kind of the long range plan so if I've been away from the studio for a while when I get back to it it's like coming home like there's nothing like it the process is what keeps me going the process is so satisfying and appealing and lovely and addictive but then what I end up making really wants to be out in the world and wants to have like a social component and wants to be able to speak to other people even if it's a second as they're scrolling through their Instagram feed like oh there's some nice colors or that's an interesting texture that's an interesting technique I didn't think of or maybe I like to make something like that you know that's great too but the only compliment that I get is people say this makes me want to make something and if I had a message that would be it the message is make something I think that everybody can and should devote time to creative pursuits and it might be helpful to call them hobbies and that might be a question for people like why do I put all this time and effort into things but you know people fly fish and they throw the fish back and they spend lots of time and money doing that and they do it for reasons that are not because they need to feed their family you know rainbow trout it's because they love it so I think that everybody should make it their life's pursuit to find what they love and then do it a lot if somebody said okay your theme this year is going to be blue I'd be like yes I love blue I also love orange and green and purple but blue would be fine we can stick with blue just like I blew the crap out of the blue the whole year and I would love it