Tag Archives: life of a muralist
Jobs with Insufficient Access to the Wall
On various jobs over the years, I’ve had to improvise when there wasn’t sufficient access to the mural surface. One that stands out in my mind was a midwestern zoo job featuring an artificial mangrove swamp.
The theme company I was subcontracting for had to install the mangrove plants before I could get the background painted. This meant painting the scene through the tangle of mangrove branches, where there was often insufficient space to get in a hand with a brush, let alone a spray gun. To aggravate matters, the back side of the artificial branches often contained rusty, razor-like barbs from steel mesh poking through the epoxy putty.
I solved the problem by cutting the bottoms out of tall plastic cups and wearing the cups like armor secured to my forearms with duct tape. The end result was acceptable but nothing like I envisioned if I had been allowed adequate access to the wall.
Brookfield Zoo Tropic World, Brookfield IL
Key Lime Cove Water Park
Museum of Science and Industry Space Center, Chicago IL
Website launch
After months of hard work, we launched this website officially today, July 24, 2014, which I note for the sake of historians who will surely want to record the date for posterity. We used Constant Contact to send an email to everyone in my email contacts, both business contacts and friends, and so far have heard back many friendly congratulations. Continue reading
What the Hex a Googleplex?
On a cold winter’s day in 1985 when I lived in The-middle-of-nowhere, Illinois (near Kankakee), I decided to go into mural painting as a full-time job and I asked my seven-year-old son, J.P., what I should call my new company. His immediate response was, “Call it Google!”
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Shedd Aquarium, Chicago IL
HELLPP!!!
In late 2011, the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago asked me to repair a number of deteriorating murals in their primate building and aviary. Continue reading
Presidential Pumpkins
Rooftop Santa with Sleigh and Reindeer
Evanston 2020 Mural Art Project, Evanston IL
Painting Rudolf
A brief informal video of Santa Claus, his sleigh, and his reindeer I painted late fall 2013 (including Rudolph, his nose not yet painted red) for a residential client in the Chicago suburbs to install on his rooftop in time for Christmas. Continue reading
Henry Vilas Zoo Train Tunnel, Madison WI
Robbing Hood
Back in the 1980s, before I became a full-time muralist, I was doing residential murals as a sideline from my day job as a cabinetmaker. An interior designer hired me to do a kitchen mural for a downtown Chicago client; let’s call him Fred. Continue reading
Airplanes
The first commercial flight I took in 1957 was as a boy with my family, from New Orleans to Los Angeles. All of the men on the plane wore suits, I wore a coat and tie. My sisters wore frilly dresses. We checked our luggage and walked from the terminal at Moisant Field (now Louis Armstrong International Airport), across the open tarmac and climbed the rolling staircase into the fuselage. Continue reading