About The Whistle Guy My name is David Chrzan and I live in Roswell, GA.  I'm a semi-retired software engineer. Several years ago when my employer in Atlanta decided to relocate to Minnesota I shook their hand and wished them all the luck in the world.  At the time I was 58 and way behind the technology curve so I decided to try and turn my hobby into a business.  My goal was to supplement my wife's income to a point where she didn't kick me out of the house.  (Actually my wife Sheila has been very supportive.)

How I Got Started In fact it was Sheila who got me started down this road.  We both graduated from Alfred University which has a world famous ceramics art college.  Although Sheila was a History and Political Science major and I was a Ceramic Engineer we both fell in love with clay as an art medium. Sheila had been taking pottery courses at the Roswell Visual Arts Center for several years and convinced me I should give it a try.  Since she was a wheel potter I decided to start off in a different direction and took a handbuilding course.  About halfway through the session I remembered some small clay whistles we bought at the Eastman Arts and Crafts Festival in Rochester, NY back in the early 1970's. (By the way if anyone out there reads this and knows who made those whistles I sure would appreciate your passing the information along.)  I decided that I would try to copy one of these whistles.  After a somewhat frustrating three or four hours I finally got the thing to make some noise.  When it was fired I took it home, all excited, to show Sheila.  She wasn't extremely impressed, in fact I could sense she was thinking "Oh, no what have I gotten myself into now?  He's making things that make noise".   But she mentioned she saw a book advertised that shows how to tune whistles so you can actually play songs.  So I sent for Janet Moniot's excellent book, "Clay Whistles...the Voice of Clay". (See the links page for more information.) A few days after the book arrived I had a crude but functional, four hole, English style ocarina and I was hooked.   "The Whistle Guy" Sheila and I started participating in student/teacher shows offered by the Roswell Visual Arts Center.  During one of the shows we heard some kids running down the hall yelling "Let's see what the whistle guy's got", and a name was born.