When I did my first solo show and it made my dad uncomfortable, I wasn't quite ready for my spotlight moment in my life yet. I didn't have enough sense of myself and self-esteem and confidence: this is when I started looking to get my master's in something.

Going through these academic programs, your job really is to learn how to be a therapist. They're training you to sit in front of clients and it's a serious matter. You're holding people's psyches.

I knew that I was naturally good at [therapy] because I was kind of that person in my circle of people in my life.

Being a therapist can be very serious though. There are people's lives in your hands. For me, it was too much.

Coming into Pacifica I knew that I wanted whatever I was going to learn there, I knew I wanted to integrate that into my art no matter what.

Working with the body and the imagination - non-verbal ways especially - tap into our deepest wounds and our highest potentials as humans.

I took everything really seriously and was overly sensitive about things, and I think that's rooted in perfectionism.