Perseverance

“Even when I was younger, I was always an artist… but I never dove into the arts until I graduated college.”

In spite of a lifelong talent, OG Millie’s journey toward her artistic career is anything but straightforward. Her first goal was to be the queen of hoops. Millie was a basketball star. The early lessons she learned from playing have created a strong mindset. When it comes to competition, she knows to get psyched up, not psyched out, and to persevere through adversity. She joked about what pushed her: she “didn’t want to be a loser."

As a kid, she had bad eyes, and had to play with glasses or goggles, but Millie didn’t let this discourage her. She honed her skills and upped her game. Senior year of high school, the most valuable year for recruitment, she was working to earn a scholarship for college. But one morning, her eyesight failed her.

Millie woke up, and saw a blackness, which descended “like a curtain… you lose your vision gradually.” At first, she thought to just shake it off, but it got worse. “Straight lines were wavy.” Concerned, her parents took her to the doctor, and rather than finding relief, they got alarming news: she needed immediate surgery on her left eye.

Right after her finals, she went to the hospital. Millie underwent a scleral buckle procedure, an intensive operation that involved a silicon band being sewn around the circumference of the eye. The procedure is designed to repair retinal detachment. Facing the possibility of losing her sight, and consequently her ability to play, Millie was scared. Yet she didn’t back down.

“[Basketball] taught me to be stronger, and to never give up.”

The operation was a success. Healing was an arduous process, taking almost 3 months, but she got along with the help of her family, and by painting as a hobby. Luckily, or should I say persistently, she was awarded a sports scholarship to a university in Long Island. While in college, she continued on the courts, and also began to pursue art more seriously. Millie studied graphic design, and practiced her fundamentals, in particular, color theory.

Through life’s struggles, Millie has kept her head up with the help of her family. Millie is Filipino-American, and comes from traditional roots. She joked, “my grandma is straight-off-the-boat.” Even though they had reservations about her artistic ambitions, the family is very supportive of her pursuits. As Millie explained, in Filipino culture, “family is family.”

Millie’s eye problems have been a burden, but they’ve also forced her to look inward, and reconsider her artistic approach. It’s helped push her to innovate, and paint with new perspective.