I am Olivia Cantrell and I am an artist.

An artist is commonly thought of as someone who paints, writes, draws, performs, sculpts, or designs and while I can and do dabble in all of these areas I would like to try and expand your definition. 

Artists are not thought of as belonging in the traditional workplace. Cubicles: The enemy of creativity. In fact there seems to be this idea that artists are people who don't have real jobs or, as the case maybe, only have real jobs in order to pay for the supplies and capital needed to support their art. 

Going through school I was determined that I would never aspire to work in any sort of corporate job because I could never imagine sitting behind a desk in a confined space, day in, day out, not really contributing or making a difference but only just existing Monday through Friday.  

However as more and more companies are expanding their ideas of what makes a productive workplace I find myself being drawn to the idea that creative spaces and people lead to productivity and are intrinsic to thriving companies. 

In other words today's artists and modern business practices are symbiotic in nature.