Wild Billy JC

Art portfolio

my story

I was a kid with Dyslexia that was undiagnosed until I was in college and on academic probation.  I always thought I was stupid because I had trouble with schoolwork and homework.  My teachers treated me like I was mentally disabled and being from the south I heard "that poor dear boy" a lot.  I was also considered the class clown because i wouldn't sit and do my class work and rarely did my homework.  Corporal punishment was still a thing back in the day and I was often spanked by teachers, and sometimes a double whammy with the principle, and sometimes a triple whammy when I got home, and a quatrammy when my dad got home.  Yep sometimes 4 times a day.  

In 8th grade we had this vile creature of a literature teacher.  We were studying “The Hobbit”. A major grade was to create a character from “the Hobbit”.  With little instruction and relatively no artistic skill, I created a Bilbo Baggins with papier Mache and a lightbulb to create the head like the teacher said would work and a basic puppet skeleton.  I glued my own hair onto the puppet, and even fashioned an “Arkenstone” from an actual Crystal with my father’s Lapidary equipment. I sewed clothes for the puppet skeleton, and made a purse for the Arkenstone. 

The whole product looked pretty awful, but with no artistic experience, no sewing skills at all, and a perfectly fashioned Arkenstone got me a ‘D-Minus” on the project.

Experiences like this and my not knowing I had a form of dyslexia did create some challenges as I was growing up, however my past does haver an affect, but does not define me today.  

Granted the Bilbo was truly atrocious and should have at least been a C-Minus for effort.  This gallery though I care not what people think, because after months of pouring over thousands of photographs and editing hundreds down to just these ten, I am proud as punch of the outcome and I give myself an A +. 

Billy JC