It feels like you’ve lived a lot of lives. Could you tell me about some of them?
I’ve been a scene painter, a florist, a costume designer, a production designer, an interior design assistant and a waitress. I had a weird stint where I lived in a fire tower by myself for three years. I wanted to go into the healing arts or the visual arts, and a wise woman told me, “Why don’t you make art that heals?” So I started taking classes in England on creating healthy homes, which wasn’t really a thing here in North America. It blended all those elements of my life. The teacher referred me to her niece, who hired me to do her whole apartment when I was 24.
I read every book in the library on interior design, and then I thought, 'I’m quite theatrical'. So I went to school for theater, and that’s when I started doing costume and set design. But I was more of an entrepreneur because I kept saying to the professors: 'If I got a job working on music videos and films, can I get credit for that? If I do production design for this film, can I get credit for that?' I was trying to make a living and go to school.