What do you want to be when you “grow up”? Are you there yet?
This is an age old question that you get from early on. What do you want to do or be when you grow up? For me, the answer has always been an artist. I had some brief stints where I thought I wanted to be something else like an architect or scientist. Those stints never lasted long. I was always called to art.
But seriously stop with the “growing up” talk when we are so young. I feel like we’re always in a hurry and then we get there and wished we had slowed down a bit more.
I grew up as an artist. I experimented with all sorts of art forms throughout the years. Some of my earliest interests were drawing and photography. After that came painting, ceramics and design. I was lucky that my parents helped me with these endeavors and supported my efforts.
In high school my art teacher even threatened to fail me so that I would have to stay another year and win some more contests with my art. I’m not sure it really worked that way as a straight A student but he was funny at least. He also had me teach him some graphic design. I think this is when I really saw how I could meld computers and art. I thought “art alone, I could never make it but with a computer, I could.”
When I said I wanted to go to college for art my parents still supported me. They never told me it was stupid, they were just proud that I wanted to get more of an education than I already had. When I enrolled in college I didn’t even know a BFA existed but in my first year I found out and was well on my way to my art degree.
You want to know what a BFA is, it’s a Bachelor of Fine Arts. Basically I tell people that I was able to take almost every art class that was offered along with my bac core requirements and graduate in graphic design. I also got a minor in Psychology because I love trying to figure out people and how the brain works. It’s fascinating and it fulfilled my love of “science” that always lingered in the background.
I also tried to get an art history minor but it wouldn’t work with a BFA because I would have to take more classes than they offered since it filled my BFA requirements. I couldn’t do both. So, in a way I have an art history minor but it will never be recognized. I took every art history class but one. When I graduated I could have been a tour guide in Europe. It was in awe of all the art when I saw it in person for the first time.
What’s weird is that in college I never took photography. In fact I let my photography lapse for many years. It wasn’t until I started traveling after college that I picked it back up. I really didn’t dive deep into it again until a few years ago. Now that’s all I want to do. I want to check out new places and photograph it.
So, what do I want to be when I grow up? First do we ever really grow up? I mean, who wants to stop learning? Not me! I’m not sure what I want to do all my life but I know art will always be apart of it whether it’s “work” or just a “hobby”. What defines work and hobby. Do you get paid for it as your “full-time” gig? Then it’s work. I live in Portland so “full-time” is relative to the rest of the world.
Post image features an amazing quote card from stokequotes by my friend Marli. The whole deck is full of awesomeness.
