THERE IS NO PLACE LIKE HOME.

her career as a singer-songwriter and major recording artist; and Lee is a poet and graphic artist. After Charlotte and Grace were born, the travel involved in Dream On Productions was too much. Peggy set it aside and began teaching piano at their Potterville home campus and also painting beautiful wooden bowls which, after starting her own firm, sold at venues across the country as well as in Switzerland, Italy and Japan.

Sparky, meanwhile, was expanding his craft. He had always had an affinity for wood and became particularly interested in painting and woodburning designs into wood dimensional and unimaginative. But the 1970s changed that. New sign makers, like Sparky and his team, began to create a new niche: signs as public art.

“I didn’t set out to do that, but when I did something pretty cool, and it got out to the public, I started getting comments. The response attracted me,” Sparky told Vermont Business Magazine. “I was among the first group of people who attempted to take the sign industry in a different direction.”

But it didn’t come easy.

On his journey from “hippie to creative businessman,” Sparky said he had to learn how to estimate jobs, how to do the books, learn about contracts and how to make things safe. The first five years, he said, were pretty much “nonprofit years,” but Peg‘s waitress job in those early years could pay the bills. In the meantime, he said, “I kept making mistake after mistake. It was all just part of my learning curve.”“

Throughout it all, he’s kept his imaginative spark at the center of his business. A prominent sign inside his 10-person headquarters off Route 100 in Waitsfield proclaims the firm’s mission: “Designing is like dreaming when you are awake. Designing is the most delightful thing that human minds can do together. From the first spark of a concept to the evolution of something unique, the process is the reward. Enjoy.”