Museum Models . Who , What and Where

My dad got me started. He had a couple old magazines (granted I'm only 25 so anything black and white I consider old). I remember one--still have it I believe--that had the famous desert rats' jeeps vignette/diorama, you know the three jeeps with the men, in it. I always thought that was so cool. But my dad got me into modeling. I have now surpassed him in skill, but I always remember sitting in a chair next to him working on stuff and hanging them on my ceiling. Only specific ones I remember are a Russian Hind that was unpainted, and then Italeri's C-130 (disappeared in one of the many moves we had). I recently bought another one for us to both work on though. The first model I remember actually contributing to with both of us working on was Accurate Minature's Yak that I bought with allowance money on a vacation to Maine, still have that one--though one of the ski's are broken off. Sure Shep Paine was a great modeler and I've looked at a lot of his stuff now that I've gotten older, but the only modeler I knew by name for a long while was my dad.

Josiah, best statement I've heard all day!

Good to see you, man.

ygmodeler4

My dad got me started. He had a couple old magazines (granted I'm only 25 so anything black and white I consider old). I remember one--still have it I believe--that had the famous desert rats' jeeps vignette/diorama, you know the three jeeps with the men, in it. I always thought that was so cool. But my dad got me into modeling. I have now surpassed him in skill, but I always remember sitting in a chair next to him working on stuff and hanging them on my ceiling. Only specific ones I remember are a Russian Hind that was unpainted, and then Italeri's C-130 (disappeared in one of the many moves we had). I recently bought another one for us to both work on though. The first model I remember actually contributing to with both of us working on was Accurate Minature's Yak that I bought with allowance money on a vacation to Maine, still have that one--though one of the ski's are broken off. Sure Shep Paine was a great modeler and I've looked at a lot of his stuff now that I've gotten older, but the only modeler I knew by name for a long while was my dad.

 

I was born in 1960 and grew up during a time when young boys built models - that's just what we did! My Father and his younger brother served and fought in the Pacific during WWII so we were naturally inclined toward reading history and watching all the great military films and TV shows of that period. Dad always built ship models while we toiled away at everything from planes to tanks and everything in between. My grandfather was an engineer on the Pennsylvania Railroad so we were also smitten by the model railroading thing as well. I would say that my love of history and model building came from my father and his 3 brothers. His youngest brother was a lawyer whose house I loved to visit because we would always end up at his work bench in the basement and he would send me home with a new airplane model to build. One of my fondest memories was going to the Goldman theater in Philly in 1970 with all four of them to see Tora Tora Tora - I knew more about the Pacific theater of operations by age 10 than any of my contemporaries.

My uncle Bob gave me a flyer about the MFCA (Miniature Figure Collectors of America) show when I was about 10 years old. Since the show venue was only about 10 minutes from our house my dad took me and I became hooked on figures. I attended the show from then until the early 80s when I was off at college. These were the "Shep Paine" years at MFCA. I was lucky enough to see all of his major work including all of his box dioramas - talk about being in the right place at the right time! He quickly became the gold standard in my eyes. I knew that I could only aspire to do work on his level but it was truly inspirational and made me want to work hard at learning how. I do consider him one of my heroes in the sense that I consider what he did as being on a higher level than "model building". I knew when I attended the showing of his work at the Wyeth museum in Chadds Ford, PA that his work went beyond what we were doing. Two of his pieces still reside in Andrew Wyeths studio - that's impressive! I was also influenced by and admired other figure artists who followed in his footsteps - Bill Horan, Peter Twist, Tery Worster, Francois Verlinden and many others.

After college I spent twelve years working for a design firm as a model maker. I attribute my qualifications for this job to the influence that these model makers had on me (more so than the degree in History that I obtained in college). To this day I still work in the hobby industry which shows that if you put your mind to it you actually CAN make a living building models!