I started working with leather while a mediocre student at Ohio State in the early 70s. The old hippie hand-tooled purses and belts could be made with minimal tools in a very small space, and that was a whole lot more fun than working at the Burger Boy. After a year or two of peddling from a cart on High Street, I opened a shop, soon determined that having a shop was too much like having a job, closed the shop, and started selling at art fairs. Been at it ever since. The only downside is that I’ve traded for so much art over the years that I’ve run out of places to put it

Last Chance, CO

The name “Last Chance” comes from a small town in Colorado where I was briefly stranded while out seeing the world with my dog back in the mid 70s. At the time it had a population of maybe a dozen dusty souls—a number that had surged to 23 by the year 2000. The grandson and I are planning a road trip out West for next spring. We’ll need to stop in and see how they’re doing.