“From Avocation To Vocation: How I Turned My Hobby Into A Career” With Artist Kevin Caron

An interview with Phil La Duke

Being creative is hard. I break the rules of the art world that tell artists to find their style and stick with it because my mind is always wondering. Some days I feel more inventive than others, but when working on commissions, I sometimes feel pressured to be creative on demand. When that happens, I “change channels” and do something else to let my intuition have time to fuel me.

As a part of our series about entrepreneurs who transformed something they did for fun into a full-time career, I had the pleasure of interviewing Kevin Caron. Born in Connecticut on February 2, 1960, Caron moved to Arizona in 1973. Six years in the U.S. Navy provided him fundamental training in machine shops and aircraft maintenance yards in ports of call including Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and Misawa, Japan. After his honorable discharge in 1983, He ran a foreign car repair shop. Between jobs, he built his own vehicle, using parts from various sources. This spectrum of…