Being an artist is inextricable from my self-understanding. The practice of creating things was planted and tended by my school and its community -- education based on Rudolf Steiner’s principles of anthroposophy. In short my schooling, which seeps outwards from the classroom, was rich with art in its most humble and nurturing forms. We learn to knit, sew, work with wood, weave, paint, draw, solder, blacksmith, and a hundred other little crafts. We don’t learn from textbooks but make our own from first grade through high school. Everything I’ve learned about the world, everything I saw, was translated into my own handwriting, alongside colorful portraits, sketches, and colored pencil maps. Today I have drawers and drawers full of books dating back to first grade that document my journey as a growing human being and simultaneously as an artist.