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"I think you want me to get married after school, have kids and live in Cleveland forever!" I shouted at my mother during a post-adolescent fit years ago. I was 22. Flexing some of my first real independence, I told her I was going to move to Miami, FL before I graduated. At the time, I had meant the statement as a pejorative. Nothing felt more trapping and terrifying than getting married and having babies in Ohio. Part of me felt like this was obvious. She surprised me by replying: "So what if I do?" The elephant was out of the...

A few years ago I took a risk at a family pop up event in Austin. The organizers asked me to pitch an art activity for families. I sat on the thought for weeks. What if we painted with toys? What if we created comic books? Eventually I settled on an unlikely idea. I picked up dozens of floor carpets from a thrift store, some essential oil, a diffuser, and soft music. On the day of the event I spread the studio floors with Austin Coloring Book pages, mason jars of coloring supplies... and waited.  We were going to color. {Color?} people looked at me...

I've been asked to speak to high school groups this past year about being a working aritst. This is the story I've shared with them: Failing out of design school. The culture loves trumpeting the value of failure. Over happy hours and in self-help seminars, we all give lipservice to the value of failing. This is all fine and good, but in practice we're usually behaving in the exact opposite way: The culture and its institutions tend to be highly critical of failure, often punishing creative risk takers. That kind of atmosphere leaves creative people confused and often totally failure-avoidant. Many even make it well into adulthood without ever...