The Fragrant Past

Was everything better in the past? No, but when you look at the rich lives of Pompeiians you may forget that. I was too young or too immature to fully appreciate excavated Pompeii and Herculaneum when I visited in 1976 but we’ve all got a lot to learn from Pompeii. It’s possible we’ll never catch up since more is being discovered from this little seaside city once buried under volcanic ash. Even the 2009 exhibit at the L.A. County Museum of Art included recent discoveries from around the Bay of Naples that have never before been exhibited in the United States.









One of my first decorative painting commissions in the early 80s was a Pompeii style mural for an entry foyer. I was tentative and it showed but the influence of 79 A.D. got a hold of me I continued to express it in many subsequent projects. My last place in Atlanta was a classic bungalow that had been abandoned for years before I moved in. I utilized the pentimento and decrepitude with glazing and bits of imagery creating my own live in excavation. It was a great place to have fun with paint and no agenda.







Later I built and entire ruin from the ground up. I was invited to create a centerpiece for a table setting at a charity function. The event was a fundraiser for the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University in Atlanta and concurrent with the exhibit: The Fragrant Past, Perfumes of Cleopatra and Julius Ceasar. My centerpiece was scale model of a Roman ruin. It’s not based on one particular ruin but it accurately demonstrates historic building techniques and borrows from Pompeii in the recreation of fresco and mosaic work. The base is made out a wood box topped with a weathered piece of sheet rock. The building fragments are cast plaster of Paris, hand carved and painted with acrylic. I even made tiny pottery vessels that would have held oil and wine. Are you getting a whiff of the fragrant past?

Another Bloomsbury Life

In 1982 I was marbleizing and glazing and such for a couple of restaurateurs in Atlanta. When they mentioned they were building a house and asked would I be interested in helping out I was all –oh, of course, yes, and yes again after they showed me a book brought back from London called: Omega And After, Bloomsbury And The Decorative Arts. This was really new thinking for Atlanta at that time –to reach back into near history to seek the influence of postimpressionist London. I was surprised at my clients’ Bohemianism and as it turned out they weren’t quite ready for it themselves. It didn’t matter because I took the idea and ran with it.






Some of my Bloomsbury inspired work never made it out of my sketchbook but other ideas became painted furniture, curtains, a pedestal, a folding screen, and lot’s of painting on the walls in my little Atlanta bungalow. I did start a room for the restaurateurs but they got really cold feet. They were in no way prepared to live the sort of life Duncan Grant, Venessa Bell and the rest lived at Charleston. Ironically I adapted Grant and Bell designs for a condo in Florida. It’s a little sanitized but I think it looks quite nice in Hobe Sound, a wealthy little enclave just north of the Palm Beaches.




The Bloomsbury group and their descendants have become a growth industry, cultish though it may be. I have those four titles pictured above but there are so many more books on the subject. One day I must make a pilgrimage to Charleston. Until then I live another Bloomsbury life in L.A.

Don't miss:
YOU ARE SO BRILLIANT.

Agreed.

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.