SerenaWu,

That Was Then

Inception for me started at an early age. Unlike in a typical suburban single family home, our garage reeked of turpentine and resembled a real worn studio, fully furnished and splattered with paint everywhere. The tool cabinet was a treasure chest filled with art supplies ranging from Chinese brushes made of goat hair to gum erasers kneaded from old bread. My peers grew up with Crayola (as did I), but my mom only bought the highest quality Winsor & Newton paints and Prismacolor markers and pencils. To me, blues had names like Cerulean and Cobalt.

Even rarer, my notion of "computer gaming" meant exploring the first versions of Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia Flash with an ArtPad tablet, while a clunky scanner hummed incessantly in the background. Unknown to me at that time, play meant creative exploration when the potter's wheel trumped any other toys I owned and brushes (both physical and digital) became extensions of my childish fingers, drawing upon my unrestrained imagination.