April 24, 1996

I'M OFTEN ASKED when I knew I'd want to be a creative type.

Sometime in the early 1970's. It started with the blocks. My first toys ever were building blocks, and from then on, through the Legos, the crayons, the clay, the fingerpaints, the spirograph sets, the colored pencils, the construction paper, I had the seed of the artist in me.

My best-loved toys were for making stuff. I had enormous collections of old, dried-up magic markers that I held onto because they provided hues that you just can't get in brand-new ones. I loved fingerpainting, which I was introduced to during preschool, in a dinky one-room house called "The Little Red Schoolhouse." Even then I knew the red in "The Little Red Schoolhouse" was not the same kind of red as a fire engine, or an apple. In retrospect I'd say it was Cadmium Red Medium.

Really, though, the germs of my artistic career started with the dolls. Late at night, before any sort of school, I secretly turned on the light, opened my boxes of clothes, and started working. I made new outfits. I put clothes that belonged to one doll onto another, and fancied it an important act of creativity. I worked late into the night, obsessing over the need to have things look right that my parents didn't understand, then, anyway.

"Leave me alone!" I said. "Can't you see I'm busy?"