Everyone starts out as an artist.

You see this in children, and you see this fade from them as they age. Art has always been such an important part of my life, with my mother, my sister, and even my father being an artist, a maker. Even today, it's one of my strongest, happiest compulsions.

Yet still, sometimes, I have such a hard time calling myself an "artist" publicly. I don't think it is a lack of pride in my work. I like what I do. Is it maybe the bad impression I have of the pretense I see in so many artists?

You know, it may be something else. I hate to hear when people say how they wish they had the talent to be some sort of artist, or less often, the time. I think to many ordinary people are daunted by the extraordinary, by extraordinarily making.

Perhaps nobody is an artist if everyone is not.

I don't have to be called an artist. I just have arrange, change, layer, put it together, and make these objects, paper, or canvas understand me.