A Tale of Two And A Half Cities

The title is a big exaggeration because the half part isn't even close. It's not half a city and I don't even think it's really a village but that's what they call it, Henderson Village. Straight off the website: Henderson Village is a collection of 19th century homes and cottages situated on 18 bucolic acres in the heart of Central Georgia and located at what was once a thriving stagecoach intersection. So there you go. If you didn't get enough bucolic in my last post I've got still more. This was actually one of my most interesting commissions, another Amelia Handegan job.





I painted three separate installations for Henderson Village. Wait, actually, I created two works while the third was not specifically created for Amelia's project. She bought a series of four canvases right out of my studio that just happened to work for what she had in mind. I think it was kind of a brilliant move on her part because it saves the village from being too cloying, too period. My canvases are abstracts but they call to mind the wrought iron farm implements found in this farm country setting. Rather than iron the images are based on fabric trims from the 19th century but in this case scaled up, way up. It's not important to know that. They're just nice pictures to look at while you're getting looped in the lounge.








Later I took this same idea and proposed it for a Bamo project, a restaurant in Santiago. So that's the first city from the title. I distinctly remember the meeting where I presented my idea to the developer in the Bamo offices. The client was an international playboy, (no joke), who had flown in with an entourage to see me. Actually it wasn't just to see me but believe me it was intimating. I didn't have a big presentation. I relied primarily on my little foam core mounted illustrations to do the talking. They looked so small that after I pinned them up Pamela Babey nervously got up and explained that these weren't it. This was just a maquette. The Playboy and his entourage chatted in French and Farsi and maybe some other language while Pamela, the Bamo gang, and I were left wondering what they thought. The verdict: they loved it and so I did an even larger scaled up version of the fabric trim for Matsuri restaurant in the Grand Hyatt Resort, Santiago.






At least ten years later and I am revisiting the same idea for city number two, Las Vegas. Actually this is sort of a city within a city called City Center. I recreated the curvaceous abstract with a little gold and silver thrown in for the residences at the Mandarin Oriental. This commission came through just before the crash. I shouldn't write crash but you know, economic slow down, or whatever. Fortunately the budget had already been set for the art which also includes Maya Lin, Henry Moore, Claes Oldenburg, a few others and me, all represented at City Center. So from down on the farm to Las Vegas. Who would have thunk it? Not me.

See All

Years ago I set out to plan a European trip that would involve a house exchange. The idea was partly thrift and partly the chance to have a home away from home, at least temporarily. The deal was arranged through a company called Intervac. At the time (before wide spread Internet availability) the process involved listings in catalogs and exchanging letters with strangers in foreign countries. What eventually happened was that I opened a letter from Amsterdam on heavy weight stationery (most people used the cheap, thin airmail type) that had a beautiful embossed letterhead and I was instantly charmed. I hadn't even considered Amsterdam but this letter sold me. I checked time zones differences then phoned this Dutch letter writer to see about trading places. In exchanged for my San Francisco flat I got a 17th century Dutch canal house on Oudezijds Voorburgwal across from the Oude Kerk . It couldn't have been finer.



It's sort of great to be plopped down in a strange yet inviting place with no real pressing agenda. As it happened I discovered quite a lot including an old fashion Panorama in the Hague. Surely this was the invention that anticipated the all encompassing movie experience. And of course the panorama or diorama is still widely used today in museum settings. Fast forward five or six years I am creating my own panorama.





My commission to paint a mural for a rotunda foyer for a home in Scarsdale, New York was one of those flying by the seat of one's pants experiences. Amelia Handegan is a designer who does not micromanage. She delegates and expects the best. I do love that, although, every step of the way was a learning experience for me. Fortunately I had a lot good luck. The luck was mostly in the way of finding just the right people or sources that I needed in a timely way. I met the mural installers John Nalewaja and Jim Francis by phone before I even began the project and they told me about Rosebrand, my supplier for heavy weight muslin that comes in widths of 26 feet. I found a studio to paint the mural in that included a carpenter to create the enormous stretcher for my painting. And all along the way there seemed to be helping hands that appeared just when I needed them.









Panorama translates into: see all. See all my pictures? They're all about the production of the mural except for the top two which are from the Netherlands,the conceptual home of the project. The second picture shows the viewing platform and a section of Hendrik Willem Mesdag's panorama installed in The Hague. “My house” in Amsterdam had a garret style studio on the top floor with a big picture window that looked out onto the city including the old church across the street. The mural in Scarsdale is composed as if you're perched in the middle of the West Point section of the Hudson River Valley. I was influenced by the style of the Hudson River Valley painters and I wanted to give my client a visual respite from the work a day world of high finance New York. The foyer has a small anteroom with a low ceiling where it's more densely wooded. You walk through this into the large space where for a moment you might imagine your in the bucolic country side.

Beyond The Silver Screen

Previously on Corbu’s Cave I presented a mural in a movie. This post isn't about that but I’m starting with a reference to a mural in a movie nevertheless. The movie is Star! which includes exuberant murals for one particular set. It’s room, a large room, decorated with a shiny mural. I painted a large room with a shiny mural. That’s the connection.



My project was large enough that by the time I was comfortable in the process my mind wandered to other possibilities given the same materials. The painting I was doing was rather precise so I couldn’t help thinking of a radically different approach that also would be stunning on silver. I thought of Cy Twombly’s elegant, scumbling, rude, mark-making. The murals in Star! hardly compare to Twombly's work and yet they have expressiveness and energy that’s a little wild and I like that.



Some of these painting jobs of mine are so involved they’re like a making a movie. One morning I got a call at 9:00 asking if I could meet at 11:00 on the other side of town. I scrambled to get it together for a pre-production meeting where I met for the first time, the builder, the client, the architect, and the designer. I knew ahead of time they were interested in some sort of chinoiserie mural but because that’s open to interpretation I was basically just pitching myself - that I was the one for the job, whatever it was. When I finished showing my portfolio Marc Appleton , the architect, immediately got me a set of plans and elevations. I felt that was a good sign and it turned out to be.





First sight of the room where I was to work was a bit chaotic. There were rough-around-the-edges doorways cut into what was left of Garth Benton’s trompe l’oeil work. (Benton painted the murals at The Getty Villa.) The garden trellis painting was nice, well executed, but perhaps too literal, too heavy. In my version it’s still a garden room but a fantasy version floating in cloud.

Windsor Smith, the designer, expected a lot and there’s nothing better than that. "Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me a chance to do my best." I always remembered that quote from Babette’s Feast. It was a leap of faith on the Windsor’s part since I didn’t have anything in my portfolio quite like what she had in mind and we’d never met much less worked together before. On the other hand diversity is the modus operandi in my commission work so I took in stride. She gave me parameters, a vocabulary of imagery and palette, and instructions: make it great.



The first step was essentially to create a story board, just like a movie. I had to design a different scene for each wall and make certain the imagery had continuity around the corners. This I did in Photoshop and printed my work on cardstock to make a maquette of the room. It was my map to get me where I needed to go. I also did some test painting on the substrate, which was silver leaf on silk backed with paper. The desired effect for the paint was a matt finish. For practical reasons I used acrylic paint and mediums but I added diatomaceous earth for a flat gouache like appearance.






The pre-production phase can be a little frustrating because it looks like not much is going on. Even when I began the full-scale work the first step was to draw the entire room in pencil, which was practically invisible to the casual observer. Once the painting began I think Windsor breathed a sigh of relief and realized she could leave it to me. The room became my domain until I finished. It was a pretty special job site to come to everyday. Throughout the day the silver bounced light around that streamed in through the French doors. Like a sunny day being inside the room was a total mood elevator. My assistant and I would take our lunch by the pool or sometimes in the hillside garden where we may as well have been in Italy, a pretty fabulous environment all around.






The principle painting took about a month during which time I didn’t really know what was happening in the room next door, the ballroom. Can you imagine? Who has a ballroom? It was a big cold room and I kept the door to it closed. In the end it seemed to spring to life practically over night and felt like a wonderful extension of the garden room dream. They're both so photogenic like something out a movie.



Hand painted Chinoiserie murals can be ordered through some wonderful old bespoke companies but you wouldn't get anything like the one I produced. I think those mail order murals tend to be rather rote since they're produced in a factory-like assembly line. My work always has a sense of search and discovery and of course wabi-sabi. If you know exactly where you'll end up when you start out what's the point of the journey?

Click on Tumblr for more pictures of this and other projects. Thanks!

Bodhi Wind

I remember trepidation the moment I first touched a brush to a wall with the intent to paint something other than just a single color. It's thrilling too because I think it's a primal urge, a relic behavior, like cave painting. After you start painting imagery on walls you notice that sort of thing more. Actually I have a vivid memory of noticing an instance of murals years before I became a muralist. It was in the movie: 3 Women. Tellingly the director, Robert Altman, said of his work as a film maker, "I look at it like a painting". His movie is absolutely fascinating, conceived in a dream and dream-like itself.







Janice Rule plays the dark and mysterious painter and but it was Bodhi Wind behind the scenes who conceived and painted the murals for the sets. The imagery is fantastical and ultimately symbolic of the dynamics in the narrative and subtext. There are creatures which I interpret as not so much male and female but apsects of our personalities: Jungian, Freudian, or what have you. It's been tucked in the back of my mind ever since. I mean I've not only been haunted by the film, the characters, and the paintings, but also the idea of wanting to paint a pool.




In the movie there are actually a number of instances of Bodhi Wind's paintings including the opening and closing credits. There are two pools, one is derelict and empty, the other filled with water. Both ideas have an appeal as a blank canvas. An unfilled one might be a skateboard park. That could be fun and add an extra vertiginous thrill for the skateboarders. I'm not sure what I'd paint but there is a sort of figure that appears now and then in my work that is reminiscent of the 3 Women paintings. It's slinky and scaly and has strange ways.

Less is Bore.

One of the most pronounced characteristics of postwar Modernism was its apathetic approach to interiors. ...unthinkable to earlier architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Charles Rennie Mackintosh who believed that the design of the building, inside and out, is an indivisible unity.



So writes Martin Filler in his 1984 HG piece on Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. It's a revelatory article on Venturi and Brown, for me anyway. I knew of Venturi from the iconic house he did for his mother but beyond that little. At the time of the article Post Modernism in architecture was exploding and Venturi was getting a lot of attention for what he'd been saying for years. At the same time the whole decorative painting field was exploding as well. At least I was getting a lot of attention. If only I had clients as smart as Venturi and Brown who brilliantly layered seemingly disparate elements into a messy vitality!





Even if I didn't have clients like the Venturis I did have some fantastic opportunities to paint on architecture. It began with a job working at the Fox Theater (restoration) in Atlanta, an Egyptian-Moorish theater palace. Directly after that I moved across the street to The Ponce , a 1913 Edwardian building that was restored after decades of abuse and neglect. Decorative painting was integral to those environments as it should be to interiors in my opinion. Whether you live in a cave or a modernist apartment there's a mural for you. The separate profession of interior designer grew out of the fabric industry so most interior designers are overly obsessed with fabrics I think.




Around 1983 I began working with a couple who were building a house in Atlanta inspired by providential French designs. They called me when their house was hardly even a scribble on a napkin. Not a moment too soon really. They understood the importance my work as a decorative painter would be. I worked with them for more than a year going from room to room in their house. The children's play room on the second floor had a tray ceiling for which I designed a Viollet-le-Duc inspired motif.





I was into Goth a little ahead of the curve. My Atlanta clients' place wasn't Gothic but Eugene Viollet-le-Duc is a central figure in Gothic Revival and he was my springboard. He and I share a birthday too for whatever it's worth. My last residence in Atlanta was just down the street from an architectural salvage place. Once I discovered it I went slightly nuts. There were so many pieces within my budget. A number of the pieces I bought were from a Gothic Revival church. Eventually all those antiques moved with me to San Francisco where I created an environment for them.



Since I didn't want to leave my work behind in my rental flat I painted on burlap and muslin. The textured fabric was more like a tapestry anyway which was the effect I was after. My apartment was my testing ground for so much painting. My place was published in a local design magazine just months after I moved in and several times over the years after that. I kept adding to or changing things so there was always another story to tell. And so it goes. On to the next blog post.

Learning From Las Vegas

Actually, I don't know that I've learned anything from Las Vegas. I've only been as close as changing planes in the airport and I haven't even read the venerated manifesto by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour. Now we have Learning From Las Vegas, 2.0 so I really need to catch up. I am going to revisited the Venturi's in a future post and recently I did received my first commissions to create some paintings for Las Vegas so that's how I'm justifying the title of this entry. The paintings below are not for Vegas but they were my first commission for a hotel so I decided to include them here.




When I was in art school I often did whatever I could to avoid making anything that resembled a traditional sort of painting. That was somewhat common for the time as the art world was just shaking off the minimalism / conceptualism stronghold. Neoexpresionism was just emerging. Anyway with school behind me I almost immediately made my living as a paintbrush for hire making paintings which would have been inconceivable to me as a student. The deal was getting paid for it and the goal was to make it fun and interesting for me.



The architect, Stanford Hughes , was finishing up one of his last projects for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill which was the restoration of The Palace Hotel in San Francisco. He asked me to come up with an idea for paintings for Maxfield's restaurant. Maxfield's adjoins The Pied Piper Bar where there's a Maxfield Parrish mural. The rarefied atmosphere of the hotel suggested something historic and traditional to me and there was no directive to relate to the Parrish mural so I came up with the idea of 17th c Dutch still lifes. Exact copies seemed a little cloying so I cropped and enlarge details from a tasty selection from four different old masters. It was me challenging myself to paint detailed subject matter in oils and I had fun with it for the most part.





Las Vegas is suppose to be fun for the most part and escapist. Part of the escape is by virtue of historical and iconic sampling in the hotels' architecture and interior design and I added to it. I got two Vegas commissions back to back. One commission called for 10 separated panels and three distinct skill sets. There was a pair of gold leafed panels that I art directed and subcontracted out because I don't trust myself with that much 18k gold leaf. I had to paint six 10 foot panels each with three classical Roman figures. The panels were awkward to handle because of their sizes relative to my studio space. The third piece, a pair of paintings meant to resemble Italian Renaissance tapestries, made my knuckles bleed. How fun is that?



The one commission that consisted of three separate projects is in an apartment that rents for $300,000./night. Can you imagine? It's part of the Octavius Villas complex at Caesars Palace designed by Wilson and Associates . If you stay there you're suppose to imagine you're a Roman emperor, or perhaps William Randolph Hearst, Sean Combs? It's not my crowd for sure.




The gold leaf panels are nice but not terribly interesting so I'm not including pictures of them. I'm glad to have made the acquaintance of a good gilder should the need arise in the future. I have worked on top of silver leaf and there is something wonderful about those metallic surfaces. The next time I work on a leafed surface I want to use radical imagery, expressionistic, insouciant. Who's going to pay for that? I'm not sure, perhaps me.

So I did the historicist's works for Las Vegas and another commission for a large abstract canvas. That piece is installed at the Madarin Oriental in CityCenter . My last post was about Hong Kong and work I did there. Hong Kong is adjacent Macau which is essentially Vegas for China. There's the through line. The funny thing is that my painting for the Mandarin Las Vegas like my painting for the Chinese client in Hong Kong is not in anyway related to The East. Or maybe it is. It's definitely related to Santiago, Chile and I'll explain later.