For the commissioned series Two Girls, Laurie Simmons imagined herself as a teenager, visiting the Jewish Museum with her best friend to see the landmark 1966 exhibition Primary Structures. Would that early survey of minimal art have influenced her fledgling idea to be an artist? What works would she have liked and disliked? Would she have connected to an exhibition that included only two women, and to a formal language that was outside of what she then understood as Art? These questions open up a layered dialog about what sparks creativity and artistic consciousness. Formative, revelatory encounters with art are prompted both by a profound engagement with an exhibition or an artwork, as well as informed by larger constructs, like gender identity, ethnicity, and social class.