In school, metal artist Nicky Falkenhayn figured out she didn’t have to choose between art and sport. “As a young adult, I was torn between going to art school or doing sports,” she says. “I decided to do sports first because when I got older I could do art, but when I got older sports would be harder.”

For storyteller and ceramic artist Baba Wague Diakite, art began at home in the Republic of Mali in Western Africa. “I grew up in a very small town, where my education began through storytelling,” he says. “My grandmother said you needed to be educated before you went to school, and she believed her stories delivered an understanding that nothing else could. Her stories were the beginning of my artistic life.”

Richard Glenn never expected to become an award-winning artist. “I was the proverbial child who could not color within the lines, so I was steered away from the visual arts,” he says.

“There are a lot of connections between furniture and sculpture, such as the importance of the finish details and the need to be accurate,” Karma Lloyd and Bill Simmons create Organic Industrial style furniture, so called because of the combination of wood and metal.

Gloria Kelman creates works of art with silver clay. It doesn’t feel like silver when you’re shaping it,” she says. “But, when you’re done there’s this A-Ha! moment when you take it out of the kiln and hear that metal clink.”