Where did you get the idea to build armour for cats and mice?
A. To answer this question, I have to give some background. At the time that I made my first armour mouse and cat, I had been building armour for many years. In fact, by 1985 I had completed seven full suits of armour for people. I had been studying the history of armour for many years and had an extensive collection of books on the subject. At the same time, I was just in my second year at the Alberta College of Art and Design (ACAD), majoring in the jewellery design program. In truth, I made a suit of armour for a cat first. I did it as a project for a sculpture class. As you might appreciate, I didn’t have much time to work on this first piece; it looked okay, but it was a poor example of armour. It turns out that my tendency for exploring opposites came into play at this point. I felt that as a sculpture, the cat armour was great, but I wondered what it would look like if I could have made it with the kind of materials that would have pushed it from sculptural to real armour. I had
