Modeler of the Month:

Steve Priske

April 2003

Steve Prisk is a model shipwright with over 55 scratch built models to his credit. Several of his ships have appeared in television and motion pictures, such as: The Bodyguard with Kevin Costner, Hook with Robin William's and the T.V. series Dynasty. He's had 5 articles published in Scale Ship Modeler magazine and was recently profiled on the Era of Clipper ships web site. One of his more stunning models, the Clipper ship Raven, is on display at the Pasadena Maritime Museum. Model builders are welcome to contact him for copies of my 'how to' magazine articles.

I was born in the U.S. but raised in Brasil (12 years) so I had plenty of time to develop my modeling skills. At  21 I became a scuba diving instructor for the Diving Locker in San Diego, and as a result, spent a lot of time at sea (on 80 foot dive boats). My fascination with ships, led me to join the California Wreck Diving Association, with whom I've dived on many shipwrecks.

In 1979, I was hired by Pan American Airlines, as a flight attendant. Flying for Pan Am for ten years, I logged over 4.5 million miles (that's nine times to the moon and back), traveling to every corner of the globe. In fact in this week's National Inquirer (April 1st issue pages 18 & 19) there is story about me, and my PAA years.

When Pan Am went out of business, I was based in Los Angeles. During an  'ship model' art show, in L.A., I was approached by an art director, for Kevin Costner's company, TIG productions. They commissioned me to build the model you see throughout the film, The Bodyguard. This model was so integral to the film, it was written into the script!

Eventually, I wrote an article on this model, which was published in Scale Ship Modeler Magazine, May 1996. This led to four more articles of mine published in the same publication over the past 5 years. See this 3 page web site for highlights of those articles: http://home.earthlink.net/~ccardz/wsnF78E.html

Two years ago, I decided to see what the scenic Oregon coastline looked like, so I moved here to Coos Bay. As you see in the many photos of my recent ship models, this is a wonderful place for photography. 

When I moved here to Coos Bay, I displayed one of my recent creations in a local restaurant. This led to the World Newspaper, doing a story on me ~ see the attachment.   This article contains tons of info about me, and my model ship building.

A couple of months ago, I sold a Clipper Ship model to the Pasadena Maritime Museum. This led the web site: Era of Clipper Ships, to add me to their outstanding web site. I am very proud of this, as the Era of Clipper Ships site, is owned by the descendants of Donald McKay, pretty much the inventor of the Clipper Ship (sorta like the Wright Brothers site but for sailing ships).

Today, I build 'one of kind' sailing ship models, from scratch and sell them either direct or on e-bay.
 

Aside from building the boat model you see in the film the Bodyguard, I also was the technical advisor on the film HOOK (showed them how to rig the FULL sized pirate ships they built for the film). And quite a few years back, I built a model of the war ship, Susquehanna, which was used in the t.v. series Dynasty.

As to sports, I am an avid surfer, snow skier and scuba diver. My favorite hobby, outside of ship building is photography.

Editor's Note: When I looked at the URLs that Steve provided of these models, I decided that instead of posting hundreds of photos, that we'd do a full feature on each of Steve's incredible ships. Stay tuned in the weeks and months ahead as we focus on each of these incredible ships.    Jeff