The Makers

Some of my earliest memories are of Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, California.

Long before I thought of myself as an artist, I was surrounded by people who made things. My grandmother's companion, Russ Egert, crafted candles that we sold on Telegraph Avenue. Artists, musicians, writers, and wanderers seemed to drift through the neighborhood. To me, it all felt normal.

Creativity was woven into family life. Relatives built sculptures, played music, painted, and created things simply because they felt compelled to do so. Looking back, I realize I grew up in an environment where making things was not treated as something unusual. It was simply part of everyday life.

Some weekends were spent exploring the Emeryville Mudflats, where enormous sculptures rose from driftwood, scrap metal, and whatever else could be found along the shoreline. Members of my family built some of these structures themselves. One that remains vivid in my memory was a giant figure with oversized teeth. I found a discarded baby doll, and with my family's help we nailed it to the sculpture's hand. It stood there overlooking the bay, strange and magnificent.

At the time I didn't think of any of this as artistic influence. It was simply the world around me. Only later would I realize how much these early experiences shaped the way I saw imagination, creativity, and the possibilities hidden within ordinary things.