Who inspires me? There are many people, artists and designers who inspire me; people that I know, and others whom I’ve never met. While looking around, I can find sources of inspiration everywhere I look - in my home town, in the big city, the media and of course, on the Web. But the person that inspires me the most is my daughter, Kate. She is talented, smart, creative - and I swear - it’s not just because she is part of my family! Most of all - she is patient with me and all of my crazy ideas and the many creative paths I continue to tumble down.
I’ve so enjoyed watching her as she embarks on her life independent of us. She’s the one who helps me blog, she answers my questions about websites, and she leads me to new creative ideas. You can see samples of her ideas and thought processes at her blog: love-and-reason.com and her sense of design at her etsy shop: www.etsy.com/shop/loveandreason
Her academic career has been in art history. I always knew she was terribly creative - even when she was a little girl and dressed quite - independently! Here is a photo of Kate in 1995 exhibiting her personal sense of style.
How does Kate inspire me?
She’s a natural teacher. She imparts knowledge willingly, she’s patient, and she explains things clearly. She has worked in the classrooms at the Montessori School here and I swear I can hear her patient teacher’s voice when she is explaining technological mysteries to me. Her apparent ease with new media helps me stay up to date with my communications.
Kate is always sending me cool stuff that she finds on the Web: fashion, design, business advice, etc. She helps me sift through new ideas, and find new questions.
My designs come from me, but Kate is my sounding board. She’s the one I can share new directions with before I go public with them. We share our design explorations though digital images on email and pix messaging.
Now we are moving into a design partnership - we are working on a t-shirt line that will be Brooklyn-themed. We’ll both design; and we’ll silkscreen the t’s ourselves.
This is Kate’s preliminary sketch for our first product - the three bridges from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Isn’t it fun?
Kate is my muse, she is my inspiration, and she is my technological wizard. The world is changing, and she is helping me change gracefully along with it.
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