I think it was second grade, but it might have been first. We had to stand in front of the class and talk about what we wanted to be when we grew up. I wanted to be an artist. I had to do my report over. Art wasn’t a career I was told. Art was a hobby. Artists didn’t draw robots and spaceships, they painted landscapes. I went home devastated.
I don’t remember exactly how it happened; whether my Dad swung by the bookstore on the way home after talking to my Mom, or if it was the next day, but I distinctly remember him giving me The Art of the Empire Strikes Back while my Mom stood in my bedroom doorway. I redid my report…sort of. The paper was exactly the same, but now had the word “concept” in front of the word “artist.”
I would be a “concept artist.”