Wild Billy JC

my story

Art portfolio

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.  I didn’t realize my potential until I joined the Air Force who didn’t care if I was stupid or not and just placed me into the circumstances that best suited my abilities and their best interests.  I thrived in that environment even after leaving the USAF.  As far as I knew everything was methodical and there was not one single artistic bone in my body.

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 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 and 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 at all, no sewing skills at all, and a perfectly fashioned Arkenstone warranted me a ‘D-Minus” on the project.

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

I own a thriving company with profit margins through the roof, and the customers I keep love me and what I do.  When people approach me and say “I have a Problem”; I stop them and remind them that they don’t have a problem, but that they have an opportunity to (fill in the blank).

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