Two days from now will mark the 10th anniversary of this thing that I call Jitterbug Boy. Bloody hell! Where did the time go? It doesn’t seem that long ago, moving a table and a couple machines into a crappy little Parkdale studio. Everything fit into the back of a van. And back in those […]
In many ways, I have chosen a very bad profession for myself. Or fallen into it, rather. I get too attached to things that I make and it’s hard for me to deal with criticism. I put unrealistic expectations on myself and if something doesn’t turn out perfectly the first go, I start kicking my […]
I just realized it’s been almost two years since I last wrote in my blog. It’s funny – I guess I just didn’t have that much to say. Or maybe I was just too busy doing. Another year is drawing to a close and, as always, I get a little bit retrospective. I have to […]
I fucking hate New Year’s resolutions. I have for years. They just remind me of the ten or so consecutive Januaries where I whole-heartedly resolved to quit smoking. And a decade’s worth of forgetting said resolution within a week or two. I finally did give up smoking – almost ten years ago now. It was […]
….to quote the big Stooge himself. 2012 started off with a lot of uncertainty. I knew there was going to be enough work for a handful of us in the shop, but with no new shows on the horizon, I was a bit itchy to say the least. We’d been on such a great trajectory […]
It seems a bit cliché in the first quarter of the 21st Century to be talking about how small the world is, but what the fuck – its Sunday morning – let’s be cliché… On a daily basis, I feel like I’m working between two very contrasting worlds – one very old school and the […]
It’s a grey, rainy morning here in the city and I’m doing my best to chase away the autumnal dreariness with a cup a coffee and the Stooges playing really loudly on the stereo. Both seem to be helping. Actually, truth be told, I’m procrastinating on a project that I was really hoping to have […]
I’ve been doing this shoemaking thing long enough that people just think of me as a shoe guy. While I’ve done it way longer than anything else in my life, I’ve been working in theatre since I was a kid and have worked in just about every aspect backstage. Professionally, I’ve been a carpenter (shop […]
It’s been a busy summer as far as travel goes for yours truly. I’m presently on my third trip in about as many months – writing this post from a hotel room in Macau that vaguely smells of decades of cigarettes and has one of the strangest architectural decisions I’ve ever witnessed (long story). And […]
I am a very different person on one side of my workshop door than I am on the other – I freely admit that. There’s a bit of a Jekyll / Hyde transformation that happens when I enter work-mode. Outside of my atelier, it’s about life. Inside, it’s about the work. It’s about focus. And […]