BIO

Imani Childs was born on Fort Lewis and raised in University Place, Washington. She is the youngest in her blended family of five; she’s has two older brothers who are three and four years older than her. Admittedly, her older brothers are a big reason to how and why her artistic journey began. She remembers sitting alone at the dinner table with

 

paper and her coloring box with HB pencil, pens, and crayons. At the dinner table is where she’d fallen into a zone that hasn’t been replicated since, she’d taught herself how to draw figures with the help of creative exchange at school where her friends were drawing too. After experimenting and adjusting to her own style, as she got older she continued to draw throughout K-4. She became interested in anime, so she integrated that style of drawing into her own.
 

By the time junior high school came around, art was not the priority, she had her mindset on health sciences, neuroscience, biology, human body systems, anatomy, and physiology. Naturally, when creating diagrams or when she’d study for exams, mnemonics, images, and color was a treat for her to express herself artistically, she’d take full advantage. Fast-forward, her senior year was unforgettable, she was able to perform and hold a leadership role in her choir and create art and memories with great people and artists. Freshman year of college brought her back to the rigor and mindset of studying sciences in high school, but the actual neuroscience was at the end of the collegiate race. Long story short she couldn’t get to the end of that race, she had to make a decision to study something that she was passionate about and can see through until the end.

 

She chose to take a chance and pursue Fine Arts, she quickly felt a more welcoming environment like she belonged here with these great people, who seemed more like her than when she’d walk the halls in Fulmer and Todd. Let the record show that she’d immediately signed up for Treble Choir at Kimbrough School of Music freshman year and sung until the middle of junior year because of her painting studio. Junior year, she was also looking for work and heard word of the museum on campus, she’d been connected through an upperclassman she knew and she was hired that day. Since then COVID-19 had a hold on the museum however, she’s almost finished with her art degree, she’s continuing to create commissions, learn more about art professionalism, developing her own artistic character, networking with local establishments, and still creating and searching for that “alone at the dinner table” feeling.