Follow That Passion (Part 2 of 7)
This is the second of seven retrospective blogs exploring how recognizing and honoring one’s passion often creates a rich, satisfying life. Continuing from Part 1…
Mid-1968 is a summer I will never forget. My introduction to Disneyland® in Anaheim, CA. The YMCA-orchestrated trip soon after I turned ten confirmed my interest to someday become a dimensional designer, even though I’d never heard of the term ’dimensional designer.’ My favorite attraction was the Adventure Thru Inner Space, a three-and-a-half-minute shrinking journey within the realms of a snowflake, frozen molecules, and lightning-fast electrons, culminating with a glimpse of a pulsing atomic nucleus as envisioned by Disney Imagineers. After returning home, a new phase of my self-teaching began: building scaled-down Disneyland attraction models from scratch. Though my mom encouraged these serial projects, my dad became worried through subsequent years I might never make a living from such frivolity. Reflecting back, I now realize I grew up in a yin-yang energy field throughout my adolescent years.
Tomorrowland’s Adventure Thru Inner Space attraction and my hand-made cardboard model with moving ride vehicles via Lego motors. Left photo: ©Disney
From this point, my making trek elevated into my early teens with grand backyard creations: a scaled, 36-inch long electric monorail winding around a six-foot tall hand-sculpted papier mâché Matterhorn Mountain. The monorail was custom fabricated with a Lego motor drive and cardboard, with colored vinyl comprising the body and clear acetate for windows. The track rail was constructed of saber sawn, sanding block-shaped wood. Electricity was supplied via castoff copper stripping I discovered in the dumpster of a housing construction site. Recognize the prior connection to repurposing found items and parts?
Full scale theatrical Halloween interpretations inspired by Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion, including a casket with a frustrated occupant prying the lid open. These scenes were staged in my family home’s living and dining rooms in 1973.
For several Halloweens in the early 1970s, surprised neighbors visited our San Diego home to experience life-sized scenic reproductions of Disneyland’s brand new Haunted Mansion – complete with a floating candelabra and a transparent animated ghost playing a pipe organ built of corrugated cardboard with rolled paper tubes for sound pipes. There was theatrical lightning, faux rain, and a life-sized casket with two skeletal arms struggling to lift the lid as candlesticks teetered on top. All this was conceived and built when I was 15 years old. No, I wasn’t into Little League.
Today's teen fascination with Goth, vampires, zombies, and the ever-mysterious Other Side is nothing new - merely a reconstitution of what I was exploring back then. In fact, prior to Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion, Disney Imagineers had been encouraged in the early 1950s by Walt Disney himself to explore concepts revolving around a walk-through Museum Of The Weird, and thereafter, a sequence of walk-through scenes featuring a murderous sea captain and his lost bride.
Wooden 2 x 4s, model car kit motors, a high-torque barbecue rotisserie gear motor, electric solenoids, paper clips, metal stationery bands, soldered wiring and ping pong ball halves for the eyes.
Greeting my guests with his crudely animated face and body movements was mechanical, talking Alfred - whose face was realized from sculpted clay, a Plaster of Paris reverse mold, and layers of poured liquid latex sourced from a local paint store. Actuators on a wood/acrylic structure and a custom-sewn Victorian costume made the man. Audio signals from an analog tape player made Alfred talk, shift his body, and lower/raise him arm.
Conceiving and constructing all this without making a single engineering drawing was highly educational. Financing was raised from paper route and neighbor yard work funds while figuring out how to get the most from a limited budget. Oh, and I became a master dumpster diver along the way, reclaiming discarded liquor store displays containing sturdy cardboard, slow-moving motors, rudimentary optical mechanisms and battery-operated lights. In the mid-1970s, long before the internet, flat screen video displays and computers, elaborate electro-mechanical in-store sales displays were quite sophisticated, so I frequented the back side of a number of retail locations, dragging stuff home on my bike.
When you’re passionate about what you do, not working becomes hard work.
Throughout these formative years I was following an unknown inner guide - a siren song of sorts. It’s just the way things happened, and it still happens today to all the ‘weird’ kids around the world - the ones who don’t fit within the normal way things are done. You know the ones -- the oddballs who become creative industry-shifting adults like George Lucas, J.K. Rowling, Walt Disney, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jackson and Madonna.
What I can say today after looking back across my youth is children must be enabled to explore and feel their passion at an early age. To new parents reading this: observe what your kids have a propensity for, then support it through encouragement and opportunities for them to explore. Nurturing their fresh passion, whether you identify with it or not, will be the greatest gift you ever give them. Avoid short-circuiting kids with pre-manufactured toys and 'no assembly required' gifts. Creating is all about assembly - of thoughts, ideas, components, and in the professional world - people.
Encourage non-digital device activities so young ones can use their hands to physically feel and make things sparked by their own imagination, while interacting with real people in actual reality. The personal gratification of making something and experiencing it in the real world outweighs screen points and gold icons from virtual building exercises. When glue doesn’t hold something together in actual reality, a different type of thinking, troubleshooting, time planning, and alternate action is required, compared to the swipe/click reset of a game.
‘Articulated Hand’ project made from craft foam, paper straws, sticky tape, beads, twine and chopsticks. Explore the Go Science Kids link below to discover this and other interesting projects. Images: Go Science Kids
Crafting things by hand develops the mind in different ways from tapping a keyboard and swipe-clicking. Let youngsters discover the joy of imagining, pretending, inventing, and building from scratch with real materials, sticky glue, malleable clay, bendable wire, and tangible hardware. Allow mistakes to be part of the learning process. Making with real pieces and parts shapes one’s creative potential in unimaginable ways, while producing a tangible object which stands apart from the many virtual objects. Of course most everything begins in the digital domain, so here are some starting points…
For science oriented project ideas, explore Go Science Kids
Discover a colorful array of art projects at Left Brain Craft Brain
Light and projection effects can be found at Rolling Stone
Go to Part 3
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