To look at artist Heidi Marie Balmaceda’s paintings, you’d never guess she once avoided working with color. “I was actually terrified of working with color,” she says. “I thought it was scary and complicated. Then about a year and a half ago, I got a 4-foot by 4-foot canvas and painted it metallic gold. I went to a crafts store and found some gold leaf and began to play with it.”

When silversmith Ruth Von Büren enrolled in her first metalwork classes at the Rochester Institute of Technology after coming to the U.S., she hardly spoke any English. It turned out not to matter because neither did the teacher. “A famous silversmith from Denmark was the teacher,” she says. “Since he couldn’t speak much English, he’d show us how to do something, and then we’d try to do the same.”  

For woodworker Michael Hampel, his wave sculptures are a way to bring the ocean to him. “About 10 years ago, I got back into surfing,” he says. “When you’re going over a wave, there’s a second where you can see right through it, and that’s what I’m recreating.”

Growing up, fiber artist Nanette Davis was always looking for something to make. “I was really good at using whatever I could find,” she says. “Once, I was bored at my grandmother’s, and I found some old matchbook covers and crayons and made my own scratchboards.”