People often ask why ...
I got started building and repairing kaleidoscopes.
The words curiosity, desperation, happy and faith come to mind.
One Sunday afternoon in 1987, while trying desperately to amuse a cranky and restless little pal, I remembered that stashed away, was an old cardboard kaleidoscope like the ones that we all had when we were kids.
It made her happy, but curiosity got the best of me, and after desperately seeking something else for her to do, it ended up on my workbench, but only a little banged up, and had given up its' simple secret.
A new journey had begun.
Repairing kaleidoscopes feeds the curiosity that has consumed me since childhood about the way things work. After about 15 years of building my own scopes, The Queen of Kaleidoscopes herself, Cozy Baker, suggested that I offer a repair service to the collectors who had nowhere to go when they found themselves with a damaged piece.
I felt confident enough to explore the work of other fine kaleidoscope artists work in need of repair or restoration, using over 35 years of experience gained working in the family business as the shipping clerk and company schlep, and as a finisher in an obscure furniture restoration business.
A leap of faith.
SOME FOLKS ALSO WONDER ...
what else I enjoy doing with my time? There's no excuse for boredom in my world. Music has been a major part of my life, and I still enjoy performing, either solo piano, or with my ageing rock 'n' roll band, The Nightflys.
I can spend hours paddling and fishing in my comfortable little kayakanoe "Folderol", or sailing in the magnificent 10 foot 1&1/2 inch long sailboat the "E. Normas" (affectionately known as Sunspot), a real beauty, in constant need of attention.
I can also spend hours peering through the eyepiece of a telescope at the beauty and wonder of the girl across the street I mean, and following the changes in the phases of the moon, and the paths of the planets as they drift across the beautiful night sky.
I love to watch things that soar, so I like to fly kites and paper airplanes, and sooner or later will get it together to renew my pilots license and get a little 2-place biplane, which I will call "the Spirit of Cozy", and go barnstorming around the country giving free plane rides, until I retire to a small island in the middle of a lake in the Adirondacks, with a winter home on an island paradise in the South Pacific.
… Well what kind of an artist would I be, if I wasn't a dreamer?