I AM A CREATOR

As a child, when I wasn't outside collecting things like frogs, snakes, tadpoles and moss, I was making things. I had Barbie dolls but not the accessories, so I made my own. I made their clothes using my mother's sewing machine, turning the wheel by hand because my mother was afraid I would stitch my fingers. I made furniture and I made a house for them. I also talked my parents into getting me the Barbie hairstyle heads and extras so I could create cool hairstyles. I was not into the dolls as much as I was into making things for them to use.

I learnt how to sew, crochet, and knit. By Junior High, I was making own clothes. One time, I crocheted myself a bikini using cotton yarn. It looked great until I jumped in the water and the whole thing got so waterlogged it just basically fell right off of me. A fourteen year old girl naked in a swimming pool is not a good thing for said fourteen year old girl, and navigating to the bottom of the pool to collect one's bathing suit and try to get it back on wasn't that easy. But I survived to continue my creating of things!

Needless to say, if you haven't guessed already, I went to art school. [Ontario College of Art and Design](https://www.ocadu.ca/) to be exact. I was in the Experimental Arts department, where I did mostly video art, photography, sound art, performance art and installations. This was before the digital age, before desktop computers and certainly before the internet. I did very well, I won awards, my videos were shown throughout the world but I never got to go with them, plus I only got paid $50 per show. Here is a piece of advice from me - if you want to make a lot of money, do not become an artist.