The one thing I always hated doing was trying to describe myself. Not because I don’t like sharing my life, but because I find these “About Me” sections to be awkward, like those exercises in English class. And then you had to share it with the rest of the class...SHREIK!

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I’m Jeffrey Collins-Harper. Yes, a hyphenate. I spent my formative years between the Bahamas and Florida and a few South American countries here and there. My biological father was a businessman, but that sounds too boring for what his business was. Well, his business was the kind of business that made him wanted in  couple countries, and when he wasn’t doing this he was something of an adventurer and the black sheep of his family. My mother was a visual artist and art teacher. My maternal grandfather was a research chemist for the military and NASA and a photographer in his spare time. My stepfather was a highly decorated helicopter pilot who helped pioneer helicopter programs in police departments and hospitals. He also flew for Jacques Cousteau and was the helicopter pilot the shark ate in Jaws II. With all that going on, it is no wonder that I was the weird kid.

 

When I was a kid things like Vietnam, Watergate, Helter Skelter, and Son of Sam were in the news. I escaped into movies. Horror movies. From the silents to Universal Monsters to Hammer Films to Amicus Films. There was a station in Miami, Florida, WCIX Channel Six, that had the Creature Feature with a live studio audience of kids. I was in that audience a few times. They always aired early Universal monsters, RKO, Hammer Films, etc. This was where I had much of my horror education. Then right after the movie was over, I either pulled out my Dick Smith make-up kit and made myself up as a creature I had just seen, or I built model towns and military craft or space craft and then destroyed them in a Super 8 kaiju film.

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And so it started. Little Jeff wanted to be in movies. Horror movies. Actor. Make-up. Monster. Whatever. That’s what Jeff wanted to do. My idols were Karloff, Lugosi, Lee and Cushing, and Price. And my directors were James Whale, Hitchcock, Terrence Fisher, Roy Ward Baker, Roger Corman, and more. I was going to emulate them. So, I started in the theater. During the week that my mother was off with my stepfather on their honeymoon, I went behind their back and had my great aunt drive me to an audition for what was to be my first professional production at the age of fourteen. I was cast as Paul Ryan in Kurt Vonnegut Jr’s Happy Birthday, Wanda June. Talk about a great intro into theater with that absurdly satirical experimental theater.

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I excelled academically while pursuing theater. Not only did I dive into theater and learned everything I could, but I also studied ballet, commedia dell'arte, music, voice. Always won the science fairs. I even won a NASA competition to design an experiment for the Space Shuttle. While in college I continued in theater, dance, clowning, juggling, anything, and studied anthropology, all to the chagrin of everyone who thought I would be in a lab. Theater, film, and television took me across the country and eventually to New York City. And getting praise all along the way.

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“Hey, Mr. Peabody! Set the wayback machine to present-day, Queens, New York City!,” the boy, Sherman, says. (I really hope you got that reference.)

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Along the way we’ve been sidetracked slash sidelined. Enter the Pandemic Era. What remained constant was that I was still, at heart, an artist. With a lot to say. And now...

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Something big is coming.