Artist's Background:

I was born in 1940 to a mother who was in her 20's during the Great Depression.

I grew up using scraps to make things; I straightened old rusty nails for re-use and made notepaper from the inside surfaces of can labels.

As an only child I contented myself at my roll-top desk making inventive drawings and taking things apart and saving what looked useful for other projects while listening to all the old hero serials as well as "The Shadow" and "Inner Sanctum" and quite often early blues music.

I often remark when asked about my "lonely childhood" that I have never had a bored moment in my life; which even then as a youngster I felt all the neighbors kids were as much my siblings as any sister or brother could be and so I often kept myself very busy making the toys, (often very inventive or merely improving the designs of others), that we all used in our playtime.

My first very useful item I made in the late 60's. When my kids would bring me a broken toy or a shoe that needed repair I would lay out my project on our washing machine, since it was a good height for a work surface. So when the old washing machine broke down for good; I gutted it, removed the top (which I mounted on a board and gave to my toddler for a play-center); cut a door in the front added shelves inside and a heavy top (all from packing crates and scraps) and voila! I had a workbench and I still use it today.

Even when I joined the fire service far from here in Kern County I came to be depended on for------ 'very different' solutions to problems.

Once when faced with an immediate need for a great many resucitation maniquins to teach some 125 Forest Service personnel; I developed a very crude facimile using an old tire,a piece of plywood, toilet tissue roll tubes, plastic bread-bags and worn out panty hose. I made several "Resusci-Carcass'" as I called them and spread them around to practice CPR on and then tested the students on the 2 commercially developed manikins (Resuci-Anne). I went on to elaborate my design (eighteen pages of drawings) and even sold some to the school district complete with objective feedback lights on a console made from an old tobacco tin.

I still hate to throw anything away without first seeing if I can make it into something else or use it to repair another thing or at least just save it because its interesting or looks like it could be later.

Jim was Scrapture 2000's 2nd place winner (Pro Div) with his "Phoenix", a Shrine Bell original made from previously frozen and expanded copper tubing, trophy-metal scrap, door-knobs, small propane cylinder, 4x4 post and broken concrete from a post hole.