Tribute to Adrian Booth / Lorna Gray installed in Grand Rapids for ArtPrize Contest

I have painted a  tribute image of actress Adrian Booth as part of the Artprize event. Mrs. Adrian Booth Brian was born Virginia Pound in Grand Rapids  in 1917.  The image, an approximately 16 ft. high painting on wood panels is mounted outside “the B.O.B.” nightclub on Fuller at Monroe. It is visible from the street and  the sidewalk. It portrays one of her most well known characters, Vultura,  fron the  “ Perils of Nyoka” serial movie from the I940’s.

 

Special thanks to Adrian Booth Brian  herself who supplied stills and  enthusiasm  for the project Also special Thanks  should go to John Douglas, a former film critic from the Grand Rapids Press,  who contributed the historical written information at the bottom of the painting. And further-more thanks to Tommy Hildreth,Eric Stedman, Chuck Anderson, John Beifuss,  and Ray Nielsen who supplied stills or contact information that were extremely helpful.

 

This piece is also for sale. It is in four separate pieces totaling 16 ft. in height. It also displays well as a 12 or 8 ft. or even just the head piece. The price is $1800.

The idea came about as a site-specific Artprize entry. The concept was to use a historical or celebrity figure from The Grand Rapids region to give local viewers a strong connection with the artwork, as well as to serve an educational purpose about local cultural history. The eventual goal is to use this as a starter artwork to create a series of paintings of historical figures placed throughout Grand Rapids ( or other towns ) to create a kind of art and history walk.
The Character portrayed in the painting  is the evil Vultura in Adrian Booth’s most famous Republic serial, “Perils of Nyoka,” which starred Kay Aldridge as a sort of female Indiana Jones. The male lead was the future Lone Ranger, Clayton Moore.

Still alive, and now living in California, Adrian Booth had a busy career in the 30’s and 40’s and occasionally thereafter. Before that she was a “Miss Grand Rapids” and a “Miss Michigan” and  later a stage performer. Born as Virginia Pound in Grand Rapids, MI, she was “discovered” by a Columbia Pictures agent. She was given a screen test, and Columbia was impressed enough to sign her. She started performing as “Lorna Gray”, a name  she kept until 1945, when she changed it to “Adrian Booth”. She worked mainly in the studio’s B unit, and sometimes worked with Republic or Monogram studios. She also  occasionally worked with the “Three Stooges”, Buster Keaton and W.C. Fields in comedy shorts . Once she left Columbia, she worked mostly with Republic Pictures after 1941, appearing in westerns  ( working with  cowboy stars like John Wayne, Roy Rogers, the Durango Kid  and Wild Bill Elliott), thrillers, horror movies, and in the serials in which the studio was  best known for. She married actor David Brian in 1948, and after making films for a few more years, retired from the screen in 1951.  She presently  engages in philanthropy.

My Chicago Ave. Green Transportation Mural

This is a mural I painted this summer (2009)  in Chicago, Il. The theme is alternative transportation. Done under the auspices of the Westtown Chamber of Commerce.One block west of Halsted on Chicago Ave.  About five weeks of   really hard work.

My bike on the blank wall

Philadelphia Mural Viewing Trip

In May and June I spent two separate days In Philadelphia taking a look at some of the murals  there. There are actually over 3000 (yes, three thousand  ) murals in the city. The instigator of this was Jane Golden who started an anti-graffiti campaign in Philadelphia where  graffiti artists were redirected to Mural painting.   That was in 1984 and the program has grown  a lot since then  Check out  http://www.muralarts.org/ for more info.

They have pioneered the use of photo-shop to paint photo-real murals as well as  using parachute cloth, which is a tyvek type  material that you can paint on in a studio and then adhere to the outdoor wall like  wallpaper. Meg Saligman is the local top dog with this wonderful flag near Philly’s riverfront. in the gallery below you can see more of her stuff,  figures in a photo-real style.

I had a great time in Philly. One  moment of weirdness was on the Sunday afternoon I visited about 30 murals A lot of them were in rough   neighborhoods . The quality and  concepts are quite high. But the most amazing thing I saw were these  insane car chases in which police chased these daredevil  gang-bangers on ATVs, who were buzzing through traffic at  breathtaking speeds . It was like an old Mel Gibson movie. The noise  and the people  and the frenetic activity on the street all disappear  as you leave the rougher  neighborhoods and enter the gentrified  areas. Suddenly no one is on the street, like a neutron bomb hit. Was  everybody out of town? Inside watching TV?

It’s a great place. They have mural routes and bussed tours as well, but you would need several weeks to see them all.

Westown Mural Commision

Recently I was informed that I have been awarded a  commission to do a mural  in the Westown neighborhood of Chicago. They were looking for street scenes from their area to be painted underneath a Union-Pacific train bridge  just west Chicago and Halstead. My theme is a “Utopian vision of an alternative future” where the area has developed into a green culture. Sponsored by the West-town Chamber of Commerce.  Above is a  preliminary photomontage of my design. Paint should start  going up in July. Stop by and say hello!

Even More Washington,D.C. Mural Conservation

1880's DC mural

As my friends know I have been spending a lot of time in the last two years working in Washington, DC on  some mural conservations working with an Conservator/artist team  to conserve some  circa 1880’s decorative murals in an executive branch office building near the White House. With Page Conservation.

About the 1940’s the decorations in a whole series of rooms were painted over and by the time we got to them there were about ten coats of paint on them. So basically the process starts by carefully removing  the over-paint  while trying to save the original layer. Next, the remaining original mural  paint  is conserved and stabilized with glue and other materials. Then we re-paint  the missing areas in, trying to conserve as much of the original paint as possible. We use reversible materials so our work can always be removed.

This differs from a “restoration” which usually means a recreation of old work as opposed to a “conservation”, which actually means to keep as much original work as possible.

in the following gallery which includes several rooms, you can see the beginning stages (where the ceilings are white), intermediate stages, and the completed stages where the original murals look, well, original! Keep in mind everything you see had been completely painted over.

1880’s DC mural

Art Prize. Wow! Grand Rapids is strutting out!

ArtPrize,  created by Rick DeVos, a grandson of both the cofounder of Amway and the founder of the Prince Corp is apparently establishing a kind of huge scale people’s choice competition in Grand Rapds, MI. A  few years ago I helped paint a Richard Haas designed Mural there and am thinking about creating another public art piece for this competition.

Of course one could argue that even though artprize is offering a few big prizes,  basically what they are doing is asking artists to at their own expense to subsidize  an art happening for Grand Rapids. I am sure that the many artists who probably will participate will end up in aggregate spending substantially more money than the sponsors. I would prefer to see more, smaller prizes that would give more artists a chance to recoup there expenses.

Here is the Mural I did at the corner of  Cherry and Division . With Tim Luzak  and Evergreene Painting Studios.

Haas designed Grand rapids Mural