Like Most Kids,

I was fascinated by dinosaurs,

 and went hunting on the Isle of Sheppey for sharks teeth amongst other prehistoric treasures, but only recently have I come across the term 'paleoart' without paleoartists, dinosaurs remain an assemblage of bones in the popular imagination, but despite a global fascination with dinosaurs, paleoart collecting was, and remains, rare,

but then along came John Lanzendorf, 69, a hairdresser to the stars and unparalleled collector of dino art, he is a hairstylist who has coiffed Chicago’s socialites for 51 years, He’s styled Rita Hayworth, Raquel Welch, Angela Lansbury and other celebrities, He is also an obsessive collector who amassed a staggeringly vast portfolio of dinosaur art, once, his 1,250 square foot Chicago apartment was the Louvre of Terrible Lizards, busts of long-necked Shunosaurus and Dicraeosaurus looked down upon massive sculptures of Tyrannosaurus rex and Stegosaurus, bronzes of Dimetrodon and Triceratops commanded tabletops and floors, His collection roamed into every room, even without a formal education, Lanzendorf became something of a dinosaur expert, reading everything that he could get his hands on, He attended conferences, the renowned Canadian paleontologist Philip J. Currie invited him to a dig in Alberta, (Currie would later pen the introduction to a book about the collection, Dinosaur Imagery.) eventually, museums began noticing his work, the first time the Lanzendorf Collection was displayed to the public was in 2000, as part of the Field Museum’s heralded unveiling of Sue, the largest and most complete T. rex skeleton ever discovered, meanwhile, dinosaurs were taking over Lanzendorf’s apartment, 

it was around this time The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis came calling, “When I first met John, he’s got a one bedroom apartment in downtown Chicago and it was wall-to-wall art,” says Dallas Evans, Lead Curator of Natural Science and Paleontology at museum, “You’d look at a wall and there’d be framed artwork, an inch to spare, and another artwork right beneath it, taking up the entire wall, in fact all the walls of the house, even in the bathroom.” the museum wanted Lanzendorf’s collection for their Dinosphere, in 2001, they invited him on a trip to inner Mongolia, Evans and Lanzendorf toured around the fossil-rich country, visiting digs, Lanzendorf does miss his dinosaurs, but his legacy in the paleoart world is cemented, once a year the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology awards the John J. Lanzendorf PaleoArt Prize to artists in three different categories, “I’ve always liked unusual things,” says Lanzendorf, who still works four days a week as a hairstylist, “I think I might go into dog art,” he says. “It’s become very popular in galleries on Madison Avenue.” from a childhood fascination to an all encompassing hobby and all self taught.