Ceramic artist Gretchen Vaudt professed her intention to become an artist at an early age. “I was going through some of my old things and I found something I’d written when I was in first grade,”she says. “On the paper, it said I AM AN ARTIST.”

A trip to Greece inspired ceramic artist Marilyn Woods to begin sculpting the human form. “Eight years ago, my husband and I went to Greece on vacation, where I saw all these beautiful sculptures,” she says. “I’d never done figure work before, but after we came home, I started trying to make my first torso.”

Furniture designer Donny Faris got the idea for making geometrically shaped table legs when he was a student at Portland State University. “I had a job in the facilities department, and, one day, I accidentally knocked a bunch of signs off of a desk,” he says. “They fell into a twisty shape that intrigued me. After work, I went home and made my first table with a stack of picture frames that rotated off each other.”

For metal artist John Xóchihua, creating a new piece usually leads to an entirely different product line in his always growing lineup of offerings. “I have a hard time staying in one category,” he says. “I made trellises, for example, which led me to an interest in stone slabs. Seeing how beautiful the stones looked when they were wet got me interested in doing water features.”