Ceramics teacher Joyce Henry took a while to discover her passion for art. Her strict upbringing left her with few opportunities to explore her more creative side, so it wasn’t until Henry fell upon it by chance that she fell in love with the subject.

— Nicole Khudyakov

“I’d been teaching English for, I think, about seven years when I first made art. [This one time] I went with a group of friends of mine to the mountains. I had never made art as a kid. It wasn’t a pastime of mine. It wasn’t something that I went to.

I had actually liked writing poetry — that was the closest to it I had ever come. [Anyway] the last morning that we were there, one of my friends said ‘Oh I wanna do some water color at the tables. Anyone wanna join me?’ and so a bunch of us sat down.

And then, four hours later, I discovered art. I realized ‘This is so engaging.’ and I thought there was something to it, so I decided to enroll in an art class.

I took everything from all the different colleges in the area and I loved everything I took, and after a couple of classes, I realized this is really calling to me. So I decided to get a credential.”