Growing up in Germany, Helga Winter never imagined becoming an artist of any kind, much less a woodturner. “When I was a child, I did a lot of knitting and crocheting, but it wasn’t considered art because it was practical,” she says. “When I left school, I worked as a doctor’s assistant.”

For Portland designer Michael Arras, his early experience with art gave no indication that he’d eventually decide to design furniture. “In school, I took art classes with everyone else,” he says. “But I didn’t have a real interest then. Mostly I doodled.”

To learn woodworking, furniture designer Richard Massey apprenticed to both his father and his grandfather. “I’m a fourth-generation woodworker,” he says. “It’s in my blood. I learned a tremendous amount from my grandfather, and not just about woodworking, but also about life. He was a wonderful person.”

When artist and jewelrymaker Elyse Bunkers discovered metal, she knew she’d found her medium. “It’s nice to work with such a stable material,” she says. “But I also like that I can manipulate it.”   

Mixed-media artist Bonnie Meltzer likes to joke that she was born to create works of art from disparate materials. “I like to say that I came out of the womb with a purple crayon in one hand and a crochet hook in the other,” she says.