Licensing

Creative Beginnings & Influences - Part 2/6

TRANSCRIPTION: I think I was always doing creative stuff. My Dad is an author and a teacher at Iowa State. So I grew up knowing that making things was valid and the things we are inspired to do and make, they're all very valid things. And so I never really doubted it. I had the luxury being very supported from a very early age. Whether it was going to pottery classes or doing little flower arrangements with my grandmother... my grandmother taught ikebana, so there's artists in my family. I was very supported from a very early age, it was very natural. When I was little, I was always a huge fan of Tracy Ullman. And I even wrote her a fan letter. I got like a signed glossy 8 x 10, which I still have. I'm pretty obsessed with Tracy Ullman. But I loved how she could morph into these different characters, and she would take on these... she would create these situations where the audience had no idea where it was going, and half the time I think she didn't even know where it was going. But she would say, "Let's just try it and see what happens." And I loved this sort of trusting of the ability to make something in the moment. And I've always her work. I also have always loved Diane Arbus' work. And the idea that she went out into the world and met strangers and made photographs with them. And it was kind of part their lives, but part a life that she created with them on camera. And so this idea that we can create things on camera that would never have existed had we not brought something to record it with.