Often we don’t have to reinvent the wheel to learn something new – we can just ask experts in the field who can draw on their experience to enlighten us. Below, we’ve shared insights insiders from various industries have shared with us.

Sonya

I’ve wanted to make movies since I was a kid. I used to do sports competitively, and I was always the one with a camera, documenting our trips and making my friends act in my little films. After we got back, I’d spend days editing our “documentaries” in iMovie—it was one of my favorite things to do.

At the time, I never saw it as something serious. It felt like a fun hobby, not a possible career. By the time I was in high school, I had no idea what I wanted to study, but going to film school didn’t feel realistic. I didn’t have the portfolio they required, so I decided I wasn’t a filmmaker. I studied business and marketing instead and, for years, forgot about that early passion. Read More>>

Ryan Vasquez

Everything is downstream of culture, so I believe art to be a driving force in everything from what you see on the news to what you see on your phone when you need a mindless scroll (which I do not recommend, for the record). I think even growing up,I started to see our attention waver. We were moving away from monoculture, networks were beginning to ebb in the shadow of streaming services, phones were becoming the addictive product we now know them to be, and I began to see art, especially live entertainment where everyone is semi-forced to pay attention, as a way to unite a few hundred people at any one time under the umbrella of something meaningful: an idea, a purpose, a reason for being that’s a little grander than your weekly task list. Read More>>

Huanzhe Hu

I grew up in a collectivist environment, where personal boundaries could feel fragile—easily blurred or erased. That gave me a deep-seated fear of losing my individuality and an anxiety about being homogenized. Creating became my way of pushing back against that fear. Even before I had a clear concept of what “art” was, I was drawn to the act of bringing something into existence from nothing. There’s an exhilaration in giving form to imagination—it feels like free-falling, slightly dangerous, almost illicit.
At the same time, I love the process of creation itself. Art has the unique ability to hold something in an unspeakable state while still making it felt and understood—something no other discipline can fully replace. I’m fascinated by that space, where meaning is sensed rather than explained, and where imagination finds its own form. Read More>>

Richard Howard

I have always had an interest in the arts. I drew quite a bit as a kid, I played music in college, and I painted quite a bit in between. I always had a camera of some sort, be it a disposable film camera or a digital point and shoot. I never really used them a lot, but I had them for when I needed them. Read More>>

Keith Bender

From a young age, I was captivated by stories of myth and adventure, which led me to fill notebooks with my own wild tales. I studied History and Classics at San Diego State University, where an idea for a mythological adventure series, infused with Greek history and philosophy, took root. Read More>>