Paul's Biography
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My childhood began in 1956 in San Francisco's bohemian North Beach,
where my parents lived in a small apartment on Greenwich Street. In the
same neighborhood my grandparents had a photography studio with a
warm, cozy kitchen in the back, where family and friends would gather for
the wonderful Italian meals my grandmother always cooked.
Naturally, we kids had our pictures taken a lot. As you can see from this
photo, I was destined to have a relationship
with The Mouse early on.
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As the 60's rolled along my family moved to the suburbs. By that time my
vivid imagination had found expression in my painting, sculpting,
photography and eventually 8mm films. After graduating high school in
the 70's, I moved back to the city in search of an outlet for my creativity and
other adventures.
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I attended avant-garde filmmaking classes at the Art Institute and did
design and building work for the San Francisco Television Workshop. I
was working in an architectural model shop downtown in 1979 when a
friend told me about a temporary job in Los Angeles. Without hesitation I
moved south. There were no regrets.
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A few months later I was hired by Walt Disney Imagineering (then W.E.D. Enterprises; W.E.D. stands for Walter
Elias Disney) and became an "Imagineer". I stayed with Disney for the next twenty-one years, moving from one
project to another as an artisan, designer and eventually art director/concept designer. I concentrated on
animatronics for years and worked on many of Disney's biggest animatronic productions. My favorite project was
Paris Disneyland, where I art directed production of the figures for the park. I eventually relocated to Paris for a
year and a half for the realization of the model.
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Another wonderful project was Disney's "Animal Kingdom." I worked on concept design for the fantastic "Beastly
Kingdomme" land was never built as yet, and also designed and directed the production of the dinosaurs for
"Dino-Land".
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By 2001 Disney had reduced its production. Projects were few and far between. After 9/11 the bottom dropped
out. Disney laid me off at the beginning of December 2001. Well, it was a great ride while it lasted.
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Back in 1995 Richard and I met, and we have since established PARIARTS (paul+richard+arts get it?), realizing
our life-long dream of having our own business.
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Cheers!
© Walt Disney Co.
It looks like I built the entire model but I didn't. I was lucky enough to be asked to
pose for "Technology Illustrated" magazine in 1981 while working in the model
shop. I made a lot of the landscaping for the model with others and also built the
"Communicore" section of the model.
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