Bonnie and I always saved wine corks. I’m not sure why, but I guess I just didn’t want to throw them away. After accumulating several large boxes of corks, Bonnie asked me if I was ever going to do something with the corks. I had thought about it several times, but still wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do. Tim Marpe, our caretaker, must have decided he needed to get me started, so one year he made a display of corks running in all different directions. He framed it and gave it to us for Christmas.
This immediately motivated me and I started by making a large Power Cat (the K-State logo) out of corks on a flat surface. I ended up making several of them as donations to K-State. On a couple of them, I added several layers of corks in the shape of a football to give them depth. I made several other “pictures” including the logo of The Great Mandarin Restaurant as a thank you for saving corks for me. I then needed more corks, so I called the manager of the Northwest Airlines World Clubs. I figured they would have lots of corks. I told the manager that I would donate five cents to the Northwest Airlines Children’s Charity, for every cork they saved for me. They saved over 15,000 corks for me. Whenever I told my friends about my cork art hobby, they too would start saving corks. Soon I wasn’t lacking for corks any longer!
