As a child, Hickory Mertsching was always drawing and painting. “I drew a lot of boy stuff like trucks, and even when I was a child, people seemed to respond to them,” he says.

Arnon Kazmarov and Fergus Kinnell took very different paths to Oregon, but a meeting at a party at a mutual friend’s house led the two metalsmiths to start a blacksmithing studio, K & K Forgeworks.

With a mother who was an artist, Leah Nobilette says creating things was an integral part of her childhood. “My mother introduced me to art early, and we were always either taking art classes or just creating things,” says the ceramic artist. “I’ve always loved making things. When I was a child, I was really into making little pieces of furniture out of sticks. I called it Fairy Furniture. I’ve always been very tactile in my art. I like art where you can touch the materials.”

For mixed-media artist Yoshi Aoki, working in a variety of media is one of the main reasons he enjoys being an artist. “I love materials,” he says. “Only after coming up with a design do I choose the materials I’ll work with to create it.”