I never wanted to be an artist
Portrait of me from 1st Grade by my Dad. Charcoal, 1975
The childhood plan (that didn’t stick)
When I was in eighth grade, someone asked the classic question: What do you want to be when you grow up? I answered “pediatrician” without thinking twice. I loved little kids, and it felt like a purposeful path. By ninth grade, I doubled down by choosing Latin instead of Spanish or French, convinced it would give me an academic edge.
But the truth is, the plan was never the real story.
For a long time, I never imagined myself becoming an artist.
My dad with my grandfather (Lolo) in 1956, after winning first place in an art competition sponsored by Shell Corporation in Manila.
Growing up with an artist for a father
I resisted art partly because my dad was exceptionally gifted. He was a hyper-realistic fashion illustrator in 1970s Los Angeles, one of those rare artists whose drawings were so precise and elegant they anchored advertising campaigns before photography became the norm.
His talent was inspiring, but it also felt enormous. I didn’t know how to step toward art without feeling like I had to match something already extraordinary.
The teacher who shifted everything
High school made my path even less predictable. My science teacher was intimidating, which made the idea of medicine suddenly less appealing. But then there was Mrs. Peckett, the warm and encouraging art teacher who made her classroom feel like a door cracking open.
She saw something in me long before I recognized it. She offered two summer scholarships, one to ArtCenter College of Design in 1984 and another to Otis/Parsons in 1985. Those programs changed the way I saw the world. Drawing and painting became all I could think about.
Choosing a creative career
I eventually graduated from Otis/Parsons in 1990 with a BFA in Communication Design and stepped into a long, fulfilling career as a graphic designer and art director. For over 30 years, design has shaped how I think about form, balance, color, and visual storytelling.
It felt like the perfect home for my creativity, structured but expressive, strategic but intuitive.
The unexpected beginning of ceramics
Then, in 2009, everything shifted again. My husband surprised me with a ceramics class, and it was an immediate turning point. The first time I centered clay on the wheel, something clicked in a way I didn’t expect. Ceramics was tactile, grounding, and radically honest.
Working in three dimensions introduced a new language, one rooted in texture, gesture, and presence. Bit by bit, clay made space for a different kind of expression. Over time, that practice became Eusebio Ceramics.
How it all circled back
I often think about how far this path wandered from my eighth-grade answer. And yet, in its own winding way, it brought me right back to something essential. Art was always nearby. I just needed time, and a little clay, to claim it fully.
What did you want to be when you were growing up, and where did the path actually take you?