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.

When life closes a door, God opens a window.

My parents never prevented me from doing anything, but they didn't have the knowledge of the arts that Mrs. Ranger had.

The Japanese are hard to understand, but once you do the world is your oyster.

Fortunately, I had cousins who lived in Buffalo and would often go to visit them, which I loved to do because I liked Buffalo as it was a big city. Even today, the bigger the city, the better.

I was painting furniture, learning to stencil, and explore all kinds of traditional techniques of decoration. I learned from books that I picked up.

At school there were some programs in music. I did take piano lessons, and we had a piano at home. I got very interested in that.