Art and diverse cultures have always interested me. As a kid, my mom often took my two sisters and me to different cultural events and art happenings. She once took us to a street fair in the Los Angeles community of Watts. Neighborhood kids and I colored side-by-side on the street with chalk, fast becoming friends in the way small children do. We ate food together that afternoon, with flavors and varieties I had never experienced before. 

 

A few days later, the Watts riots erupted. As I watched with a child’s eyes the scenes of protests and destruction on television, I worried about my new friends. Were they safe? Were their homes on fire? Would they be able to go to school? I felt a bond with my friends, an unbreakable link created through art and innocence no matter how fleeting the moment. Little did I know how this sense of kinship, of empathy for others and their struggles, would become foundational to my creativity.

 

As I became older, art became my passion and I came to firmly believe art can change the world. I completed my education at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, where I would graduate with honors. I went on to work as an illustrator and college art instructor.

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In 1991 my daughter April was born. She was eight months old when I first noticed the small pale patch on her skin. Over the years, she and I came to learn quite a bit about vitiligo, a medical condition that causes white skin patches that often grow bigger over time. 

 

It inspired me to write and illustrate Different Just Like Me, a children’s book that showed how we are all different, yet so much alike. This led over the next 20 years to making presentations about diversity and acceptance at schools, bringing together communities to create public murals, and even an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, in between teaching art and creating my own art (learn more at differentjustlikeme.com, and https://www.differentjustlikeme.com/get-creative- for more about the murals).

 

Recently I began creating pieces for shows and exhibits that focus on social issues and current events. I consider it part of a lineage that began with that little girl drawing in the street with chalk, a lineage with waypoints marked by travel, college, motherhood, teaching, and writing. Empathy and kinship have remained ever present along the way, a notation of sorts that we all need a little of both as we deal with life’s challenges. It will always be a part of my art. I hope it shows our similarities and differences in a new way. I hope it stirs a conversation. I hope it helps people consider a different point of view.