About Hulabuloo

My father taught me to draw when I was six.

He was a botanist and curator at the Milwaukee Public Museum — the man who built the trees and foliage for the Streets of Old Milwaukee exhibits, bringing the natural world to life out of materials and imagination. At home, he kept scientific notebooks filled with the mushrooms he collected for his studies. And he let me draw them. A six-year-old with a pencil, sketching alongside a scientist. Those notebooks, with my little drawings tucked among his research, now live in the herbarium collection at the Milwaukee Public Museum.

My first art was in a museum. I just didn't know it yet.

When we were kids, the four of us would always be raising a ruckus in the house. My Dad would holler — "Hey! What's all the Hulabuloo?!"

I'm still raising a ruckus, Dad.

I've been making things out of cardboard for 40 years.

Giraffes that touch the ceiling. Dragons built from diamond plate and pool noodles. Wizard bears covered in hot-glued fur. Tiki towers that double as bean bag games. Spartan helmets assembled by 60 kids at a time, working like a little factory, older kids teaching the younger ones how to bend and glue and believe in what their hands could make.

I spent 20 years working factory floors and raising a family before any of that. I never imagined those years would show up in an art room — but they did. The assembly line thinking, the work ethic, the deep understanding that ordinary people deserve extraordinary experiences.

So I showed up. At the Boys & Girls Club. At the Special Needs agency. At the Community Center. At Sunday school. With cardboard and paint and hot glue and the unshakeable belief that every single person in that room deserved to walk out with something they made themselves.

Hulabuloo is where all of that finally lives.

The characters, the stories, the animals — they carry 40 years of joy, creativity, and love for people who deserve it.

That's always been the whole point.