How a Career Starts and Where it Goes
I've always enjoyed working with my hands. Even as a child spending time exploring our backyard digging holes, making dams, mud and messes. Toys were often taken apart and joined with other toys to make new ones. What I didn't know is how these simple activities would inspire a future. Combined with drawing fueled other activities. One in particular. My folks had this summer home in a sleepy town called Calistoga, Northern California where we would spend our summers riding bicycles, swimming, visiting the fair ground for fireworks and car races. At the young age of seven I had a bright idea to build a model of the summer home. Drew a few pictures of the home and collected toothpicks. Sadly the project never went further because of difficulties. Fast forward twenty years I found myself with a late project visiting my instructors studio to drop off a project. His studio had tall ceilings with walls of glass that illuminated the whole space. Paul was hidden behind a large model, he's arm reaching into it making an adjustment. And that's when I heard that voice!
My childhood voice as the child who wanted to make his first model. "That's how you will build YOUR model!!" Eventually this instructor hired me and the doors opened of new experiences that would carry me through my adult life. Still model making, perhaps not as much, but still using all those lessons and experiences. Now I"m using my hand and heart to make my unique products at Kantyli which has inspired our new tag line, "making gifts Greeks love".