No one in Rome, nor in Baltimore or Seoul, needed to know what I was doing. I was free of cultural context and therefore free to observe context. I think that’s partly why I liked guessing at everyone’s lives on the street, just as we guessed at the inner lives of the Vatican busts.

My creativity was sparked in a way that it hadn’t been before, which I attribute in half to the immersion into a new culture, but also to James Arthur’s incredible instruction.