There's always an important person who helps support your interests and encourages you.

What I adore is mixing the unexpected, things you don't imagine should go together

My parents' names were Florian and Mabel Smith. My mother's maiden name was Dersam. They were of German heritage and were part of a family community with my grandparents and uncles and relatives. I was an only child.

The environment itself was culturally a vacuum, in that there was simply nothing that would inspire me in the arts. But my parents were always very supportive of anything that I explored or wanted to do.

In thinking back, not having any experience in any other elementary school, there may have been an advantage of being with different age groups to benefit from what they were learning in a more advanced capacity. With a small group like that, there was a lot of one-to-one teaching.

At the end of the elementary program, I then had to move onto high school. Simultaneously, my parents moved to Attica to a suburban area not far from the well-known Attica State Prison. Then I would take the school bus which was a very short distance away, where I was involved with a much larger community.

You can find inspiration in everything. If you can't, then you're not looking properly.