When I was 12 years old my parents bought me a Dell desktop computer. This was when desktops had huge bubbles on the back and we used floppy disks to save everything. I have an older sister and whatever she did, I did. One day she was on her computer creating this thing I didn’t even have a word for. She called a “blend”, and it was basically using two or more images and piecing them together in a program like Photoshop. She was using a program called Paint Shop Pro and of course I wanted to do what she was doing. In true big sister fashion, however, when I asked her to show me how she did it, her response was, “You figure it out.” To prove to her I could do it, I figured it out and continued to figure it out all the way to college. That was my first experience with being creative and making my own artwork and much of it is in thanks to my sister. This is the reason why I believe it’s important for us at Youth in Focus to build a space for youth who may not have someone like my sister to inspire them to explore their curiosity and be creative.

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