Randy Perazzini Biography

Randy was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, the youngest of three children. Perhaps because his siblings were several years older and his parents more relaxed by the time he came along, he grew up more or less autonomously. By the age of 7 he was in love with books, and by the time he was ready for high school, he was eager to escape the provincialism of his home-town and the confines of childhood. His parents reluctantly agreed to his wish to be sent to boarding school. Even though it was only 15 miles away and he came home every weekend, it felt as though he'd entered the world.

He was fortunate to have three exceptional English teachers in high school, men who inspired him while shaping and deepening his love of literature. So when he entered the University of Chicago four years later, Randy already knew he would study literature and become a teacher. What he wouldn't know for more than a decade, though, was that his future wife was living only thirty blocks away. After college in the city, Randy returned to a small town, attending Cornell University where he received a Ph.D. in English in 1975. By then, however, the market for literature professors had evaporated, and Randy was hired to teach freshman composition at a small college in Pittsburg, Kansas. When summer vacation finally came, he fled.

He traveled through Italy for ten weeks, and toward the end, before Michaelangelo's Pieta then in the Florence Duomo, he met Gail. After ten days together, it was back to Kansas. The following summer they met in Paris, and drove and camped to Greece and back over the next seven weeks. Randy always knew he would not renew his contract, and by the time he entered its third and last year, he also knew what he would do next: move to Mexico City and get married.

The day after they returned from their honeymoon, Randy was offered a job teaching high school at the American School Foundation. The seven years he spent there were the happiest of his teaching career: he began a photography program, a student literary magazine, an overseas travel program for academic credit, and Advanced Placement English. He organized and chaired the Humanities Department, got to teach authors and books he especially loved, and had lots of extraordinary students, many of whom are still friends.

He and Gail moved to Santa Fe because he was offered a position at St. John's College, a non-traditional, secular liberal arts college whose curriculum is based on the classics of Western civilization. He was enthused by the college's policy that faculty teach throughout the program—mathematics, laboratory science, ancient Greek, music as well as philosophy, political science and literature. Although he appreciated the education that teaching there provided him, he was never really happy and finally, in 1993, he left. Since they both wanted to stay in Santa Fe where other teaching opportunities were uninspiring, Randy decided to begin a new career.

He had always helped Gail with record keeping, preparing work for exhibition and setting up the display, but he was astonished to discover that there was more than enough work to keep him busy full-time. The last ten years have flown by—intense, fun, crowded, rewarding, and filled with collectors who have become friends.