Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden - Bicycles

First, the alter ego. In his artistic life, John adopts the name Giovannia Meola from his beloved father, who was a machinist in a follow-the-handbook world of New England factories. The son dedicates his unorthodox art to the man who taught him how to work with tools and so introduces a sly, freewheeling universe where a saw blade becomes a tea table to be plucked for purchase from an art gallery or hidden away like contraband, too sacred to sell.

Then there's his burning need to express. Meola keeps logbooks on nearly everything he encounters: verbal sketches, ideas for projects, "recipes for madness," he laughs, rifling through dogeared volumes stuffed with notes and commentary from his worldwide adventures. "The Existentialists, the Beat poets, still define half my imagery," Meola says. Favorite authors are William Gaddis and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and it's a Warren Zevon quote that revs him up: "I'll sleep when I'm dead."

Reference: One man's trash is John Meola's treasure.