 A: Ohio, USA. Q: What was your favorite subject in school? A: Lunch recess. Q: C'mon really? A: Art! A very close second was reading, I still love to read a book a week! Just like drawing in 3-D, you can travel to most fabulous places with your imagination and a good book. Q: What is the most important thing to you? A: My toothbrush. Q: And? A: My very cool, brilliant, talented, creative, funny, fabulous family! My mother Joyce (you can read more about her in this web site under "my art hero's"), and my father Harry live in the same house that I grew up in Carlsbad California. My sisters Mari, Melissa, and sister-in-laws Tina and Nicole. My brothers Stephen, Karl, and my brother-in-law Patrick. Little genius Andrea! My grandmothers both named Helen, my aunt Debbi, my aunt Nancy and her Ohio family, my cousins Shawn, Meagan, Candice, Greg, Clark, and Karly, my niece and nephew Ian and Laurel. Whew! What a blessed man I am to have such a warm wonderful family. Q: What is your favorite things to draw? A: 3-D Pictures. Q: Can you be more specific? A: Really super cool 3-D pictures. Q: What kind of cool 3-D pictures? A: This is a difficult question because every day I get up in front of a different auditorium full of elementary children just like you. Each time I begin to draw with the group I ask, "where do you want to go with your pencil powered imagination today?". Each day the answers are so very different and exciting. "Let's go to the moon!", "Let's go to Africa!", "Let's go under the ocean!". If I had to pick one, it would be the gorilla drawing in my "Drawing in 3-D" book. I had to struggle with this drawing. 
I did not know how to draw a gorilla, and had to look at Lee Ames how to draw books, Zoobooks, National Geographic magazines, Graham Baese's book "Animalia", Steven Kellogg's book "The Aardvark's Alphabet Adventures", Gary Larson's "The Far Side", and Bill Waterson's, "Calvin & Hobbes", and many others. I must have drawn 500 gorillas before I ended up with the one in the book. On the gorilla episode of "Imagination station", the lesson was taking me way too long to complete for television, so I had to limit the TV lesson to just drawing the face and cool nostrils.Q: What is your favorite color? A: glowing dragon neon green! Q: What do you do when you are not drawing? A: Laundry! I love doing laundry! Weird eh? But my clothes sure do smell good!  Q: No really, what do you do? A: I'm serious, after I return home to my nifty little Santa Barbara abode from a 3 week elementary school lecture tour, I've got some serious laundry to do. Q: Okay, after you do your laundry what do you do? A: Hmmm, water my plants, feed my neighbors cat some nice treats, I sure do love cats… too bad I'm so allergic to them. I have to put socks on both my hands to pet cats, then I dash to the shower before I start sneezing and wheezing, bummer dude! Each evening I read in front of the fire, and on weekends I enjoy this lovely California Riviera town by riding bikes along the beach, rollerblading, jogging, and if I can get a seat on the charter dive boats I'll spend the day scuba diving off the channel islands. Q: What is your favorite word? A: "Rolling!" Q: "Rolling"? A: That's what the floor director shouts in the television studio when we are all in position and starting to "roll" tape to begin shooting another episode of "Imagination Station". I just love taping these shows, we all have so much fun! While I'm talking about the production, did you know it takes over 40 talented folks to make one episode of my show work? Next time you watch the show, check out the credits. So many brilliant people putting in 12 hour days for months to make me look good. You know how when I'm drawing a picture I'll banter about all kinds of interesting facts about that object? Well, if you look closely you'll see an ear piece in my right ear, usually hidden from the camera. During each show the producer Robert and the Director Doug will be whispering to me through the ear piece very cool information to share with you. Those dudes sure make me look smart of television! Q: What is your least favorite word? A: Mediocrity. Never settle for doing anything in your life mediocre, always go way beyond everyone's expectations. You are EXTRA-ordinary, amazing, and brilliant. Share your genius with the world. Q: What is your favorite sound? A: The sound of the ocean as it races past the hull of a sail boat on a hot sunny day. Q: What is your least favorite sound? A: Adults yelling at children in the grocery store. Q: What is your favorite song? A: The Barney theme song, "I love you, you love me..", No, just joking, My favorite song is the Broadway play Les Miserables theme song "One More Day," also "Empty Chairs." Q: What is your least favorite song? A: Any song that glorifies violence. Q: How many schools do you visit each year? A: I spend about 190 days a year traveling to around 220 elementary schools. These assembly school workshops are my favorite thing to do, I love teaching you kids. However the travel is very intense and exhausting, so the travel is my least favorite thing to do. After 20 years of performing at elementary schools around the country, I've had the wonderful opportunity to meet so many fascinating people. So many different sunsets over so many diverse landscapes. Seattle, New York, Los Angeles, Key West, what a glorious country we live in! Q: What are you most proud of? A: The fact that I've been able to inspire you to draw, and interest you enough to read this interview. Being able to look back over the 20 years of my career and know that millions of kids have learned something valuable from me, while laughing and enjoying themselves. I'm very proud of this. Q: What is the craziest stunt you ever pulled in school? A: One day in elementary school, during lunch recess, I went back into the classroom alone to get my jacket. I couldn't resist and started drawing on all the chalkboards, covering them all with cool 3-D "Secret Cities". After lunch, when the entire class came back into the room, everyone knew immediately who had drawn all over the entire classroom. I was known as the class cartoonist. Fortunately my teacher liked the drawing a lot and decided to keep in up on the chalkboards for a whole week. Q: What can you say to inspire your viewers? A: Dream, dream big. Imagine the most amazing possibilities you can achieve and go out and work really hard to make those fabulous dreams come true. Never give up, never settle for less than your absolute best, never accept mediocrity! You are capable of such amazing brilliant adventures. You are the smartest generation that this planet has ever seen. You are the millennium children. Your generation will be inventing cars that get 400 miles to the gallon, colonizing the moon and mars, discovering fantastic medical breakthroughs, even exploring the far reaches of the galaxy, our planets oceans, even the very core of Earth! What an exciting time to be alive, I can't wait to see what you do over the next 20 years, I'm holding on for an exhilarating ride of creative global evolution! |