- Magic
- It really is beautiful, what he's doing.
- It's a work of art, really.
- I was working at a car lot, and a lady came in
looking for a car, and she gave me a gift, a paper flower.
And at that point, I was intrigued,
because I'd never seen anything like that before.
I kinda graduated from making little cute dainty
flowers that keep the customer happy.
Switching from craft to art, showing the real beauty
and significance of what I was trying to expose,
and that was take a paper towel and transform it
into a flower.
Once I got to that point, where I realized
I can make a living on this,
then I had to settle down and start really reevaluating
what was going on.
There are differences in napkins.
Personally, I use the Tork premium MB570
9.125 by 9.5, the most durable multi-fold hand towel
on the market today.
How I got started at Powell's, I was sitting back
with a napkin one day, and I was thinking,
that I wanted to be in a place with disposable income.
A bookstore.
A bookstore with coffee.
And so Powell's was perfect as far as being able to get
my research in, and at the same time have people coming in
from all over the world.
Different flowers dictates different music.
Fast for the morning glories.
Slow for the roses.
The calla lily, that's a little bit different.
It's more of a melody, put me in the mood.
These are the main three flowers that I make:
the calla lily, the morning glory, and the rose.
One of the reasons I make these flowers is because
the crowd at Powell's dictate it.
I didn't really pick these flowers, they were kinda,
how should I say, chosen for me.
And what I do is I look at the crowd,
and then I make flowers according to what I see.
So there's more men than women, I pick that one.
There's more women than men, I pick this one.
This one's in between.
Both men and women like that one.
I was making tulips, tiger lilies, orchids,
I mean, you name it, if I see it, I can make it.
But that don't mean they'll buy it.
I don't wanna be the artist that makes a lot of
beautiful things that sits in my room,
that don't work either.
I gotta eat, sleep, and usually wake up with a roof.
You gotta bring beauty to the world
that the world wanna see.
- It sort of makes me
think of the old-fashioned stage magicians.
I just like watching his hands.
- One of the things I like to do is
make sure that I'm captivating the audience,
and that's what I call it putting on the full deal,
where I'll do the hand tricks to kind of lure 'em in.
- His movement caught my eye, and then I started
to see what he was doing.
- I see people, and after doing this for 11 years,
I can actually feel when they're looking.
Which one you like?
It's a fine line between approaching the stranger,
and approaching the artist,
and so I gotta make myself the artist.
I'll make myself easy to approach, and that way
when they do approach, I can answer their questions.
- Wow.
Cool.
These are beautiful.
- Let me give you one.
- When did you start doing this?
- I started 11 years ago.
Someone gave me something similar to that,
and now you're looking at a hobby that just got
way out of control.
- Thank you very much.
- You're quite welcome.
- That's nice, this is beautiful.
- Take care.
Do you have a flower.
- No I do not.
- Oh no, stop, no no no.
No no no no.
See, the way it works is,
I make flowers,
I give 'em away, people give me contributions
and donations, but if you don't have, I still give
you a flower.
So you're about to luck out.
I don't know if you're rich or poor, and you might
just want a flower because you know someone who need
a flower, and I hate to put you in a situation
where I say 20 bucks and you got 8 bucks,
okay, now you can't help this person out who you really
wanted to help.
So let's eliminate all the financial part.
Do you want a flower?
And if they say yes, well I'll make a way to give 'em
a flower.
They're based on math.
- They're based on math?
- Fibonacci sequencing?
- Uh huh.
- 0-1-1-2-3-5-8?
You ever hear of that sequence?
The first thing I gotta worry about is catching my one,
and that's my one right there.
And then I gotta worry about making sure that that
two can be seen.
Here's my two.
Or, you can use my two stems coming off as the big two.
Then you have your three, and then you have your blank,
one, two, three, five, eight,
13, 21, 34, 55.
I can see that, and then it takes recognition to go,
'I know what that is.
I like that.
No, I want that.'
- Really?
- Yeah.
- Oh my gosh, thank you.
- You're welcome.
- Thank you.
It's beautiful.
It's ... I have no words to explain.
It's just amazing how he makes it out of napkins.
- When I look in the future, I would love to do more books.
I would love to do more workshops, more seminars,
definitely would love to travel more,
go to different cultures,
see flowers on different continents.
It opens up different doors of enrichment.
And that's what life's all about.
Being exposed, being enriched, and that's one of the reasons
I share the flowers, because I know
I'm exposing, enriching a lot of people,
who probably never would get a chance to see
something like that.
And hey, puts a smile on their face
puts a smile on my face.