"I’ve always thought that seeing is believing,” said Dr. Elizabeth Wayne, a biomedical engineer. In her career, that’s meant innovating new ways of showing people what happens in the body, but also, as a black woman in the sciences, the importance of representation and being a role model. Wayne gives her Brief but Spectacular take on the power of images in science and life.

Toyin Ojih Odutola was born in Nigeria but moved to the U.S. as a child. When her classmates hesitated to interact with her “otherness,” Toyin turned to drawing as an alternate world in which to immerse herself. She found that portraiture in particular enabled her to build characters with whom she identified. Ojih Odutola shares her brief but spectacular take on drawing from a vivid imagination.

Artist Angel Otero’s brand of visual storytelling is a unique one: he creates oil skins from paint poured onto glass and peeled off in sheets once it dries. But as a child growing up in Puerto Rico, Otero had a very different understanding of what art was -- and a more traditional career path laid out before him. Otero shares his brief but spectacular take on his artistic process and body of work.

In 2015, artist Prumsodun Ok formed Cambodia’s first all-male and gay-identified Khmer dance company -- in his living room. Part of his mission was to support the revival of an art form all but destroyed by the reign of the Khmer Rouge. Ok told his dancers they would need to be brave in order to give voice to a marginalized community. He shares his brief but spectacular take on honoring tradition.