Atmosphere Custom Painting

Ken has a journalism degree to go with his theater degree and has actually had a few occasions to put it to use.  He has been a freelance writer for many publications including the San Diego Union Tribune, the San Diego Reader, the Painters Journal and many others.  Many of his articles  concern being a scenic artist and/or working "behind the scenes" in show business.

- To read Ken's article about being cast in the film "Master and Commander" that appeared in the November 14, 2003 San Diego Union Tribune (photo to the left) click this link:

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/features/20031114-9999_1c14master.html

- To read Ken's article about Tommy Thompson - most senior employee of the Old Globe Theatre who was a most unique entertainer for the troops in WWII - that appeared in the April 4, 2005 San Diego Union Tribune (photo to the right), click this link:

 http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050404/news_mz1c04work.html

Ken's article titled "Moon Shiner" in the October 21, 2004 issue of the San Diego Reader (the second-largest circulation newspaper in San Diego), was about working on the original Broadway production of "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels".  Above is a photo Ken took (with director Jack O'Brien's permission) of John Lithgow and co. rehearsing a scene in front of the glittery moon Ken speaks of in the piece.  The article was very well received among the theater community in Southern California.  To read it click this link:

http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2004/oct/04/moon-shiner/

"Something Wicked" - Ken's article about a terrorist compound that was raided near Buena Vista, Colorado in the early 90's appeared as a special feature in the Chaffee County Times and can be read by clicking this link: 

https://share.acrobat.com/adc/document.do?docid=7c59a412-f2e0-4be0-81c0-9b567253f521

"Crossing Over" - Here's Ken's article about working in television compared to working in theatre that was published in the Fall 2006 "Painters Journal":

https://share.acrobat.com/adc/document.do?docid=4010cf0a-03c7-49c3-b8bd-962189a659ea

 Life by the Drop

Cover story of the Spring 2005 issue of the Painter's Journal.

(The Painter's Journal is the only national magazine dedicated to the scenic arts.) 

    “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players . . .”
    - Shakespeare

    “It is only a paper moon, sailing over a muslin tree, but it wouldn’t be make-believe, if you believed in me.”
    - Nat King Cole

    Recently, San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre mounted a monster production of “Pentecost”, an epic play by David Edgar that poses some hefty ideological questions to match its marathon running time.  At the time I was working as the Scenic Charge artist at the Old Globe.  It would prove to be the rare play that would touch some of us behind the scenes as much as it does the audience. Located somewhere in the middle of an ambiguous middle-eastern country that is in the process of ruining itself with war, “Pentecost” is about a diverse group of refugees who wind up hiding in a dilapidated church.  Michael Yeargen’s scenic design presented our diverse group of refugees - the backstage crew - with some juicy creative dilemmas.

    Scenically, the focus of the play is on a large fresco that has been recently discovered behind a brick wall in the church.  The fresco resembles Giotto’s “Lamentation” from the Arena Chapel in Padua, but it is suspected to be much older.  Several of the play’s characters strongly believe the future world view of their little country could hinge on the legitimacy of this one piece of art, making the scenery unusually important to the success of this particular production. The fresco goes through a total refurbishment during the course of the play, only to be tragically and spectacularly destroyed by a mortar round smack through its center in the final act.  This presented the Globe’s set design crew with a real challenge: how to take a work of art from plaster-covered mystery back to its original glory and then blow a hole through the middle of it eight times a week!  The solution they came up with was to make five different versions of the same painting, four in varying degrees of refurbishment and one in destruction.  Like a gigantic patio doors, the painted drops would slide silently on and off the stage.  Engineering the mechanics was a formidable task, but our crack team of fabricators had little trouble designing and constructing the machinery.  Within a few short weeks, the exoskeleton of a crumbling church was sprouting out of our main stage.  Now the burden was passed on to the scenic artists to recreate Giotto’s most famous work - five times over - and that is where I enter the scene.
 
    When I first saw scenic designer Michael Yeargen’s rendering of the Giotto fresco, I thought we would have no problem banging out five of them within the allotted two-month production time frame.  After all, we produce difficult and complex drops at that rate all the time in our shop and, at first glimpse, Giotto’s figures seemed rather stiff and two-dimensional to me, even sort of amateurish.  Not surprisingly, Giotto’s hand would prove to be much harder to emulate than I thought.   After ten years in this business, I should have known better.  Beyond that, I could never have predicted that our production of “Pentecost” was going to make me question the validity of what I do for a living, shift my paradigms of what the definition of ‘art’ is, and break my heart - all before I ever watched an actual performance of the play.

    One theme of “Pentecost” is the question of what, exactly, is the value of preserving art that is naturally temporal.  In other words: Should a majestic fresco on the wall of a crumbling church be saved, or is decay and death a rightful part of its cycle? This notion hits close to home for me because the theatre itself gets much of its energy from the tentative nature of openings and closings. Subsequently, theatrical scene painting is about as temporary as art can get - if indeed it is Art with a capital “A”.  In addition to being haunted by this, our crew began to question a big part of what the scenic artist does for a living--amplifying other people’s artworks onto stage sets. The scenics argued about whether what we do is Art.  My fellow scenic JW Caldwell said our crew is basically just a “collective Kinko’s copy machine.”   “What we do is a craft,” he would insist, “not art.”  Danny Griego, who was the charge artist at the Old Globe at the time and quite probably one of the most competent scenic artists in the country, agreed with JW.  He made the claim that because scenics magnify a designer’s ideas, our work lacks the personal interpretation that makes true art, and makes art true. JW and Danny, like a lot of scenics, save their real passion for when they are home  and can submerse themselves in their own paintings. They are re both incredible artists; each has had individual exhibits at the best of San Diego’s smart little galleries - but I think they are wrong about what we do at our day job.

    In that we take the set designer’s blueprint vision and reproduce it in much-larger-than-life size, painting sets is, admittedly, a unique field.  It is true that a scenic artist’s job is to bring life to the designers’ ideas, but I have never seen us as copy machines.  I believe we are more than that.  As two of America’s leading scenic artists, Susan Crabtree and Peter Beudert, eloquently explained in their book “Scenic Art for the Theater”:   “The key to the craft is the ability to interpret . . . drawings not just by their appearance but also by their meaning.”  They go on to say, “Scenic artistry is a profession where the artist might be called on to recapture the soul and substance of art from all eras of history.” p. 4.   Personally, I approach each set as a piece of art.  In turn, each production inherits a piece of me, whether it is my distinct technique with shading or texturing, or my own style of creating line and dimension.  Even when I am doing something as routine as wood graining, I always put some of my own flavor into it.  It is unavoidable.  I can agree that sometimes my job is no more artistic than house painting, for instance, the sterile nursing home set we did for Ellen Burstyn’s most recent vehicle, “The Last Living Confederate Widow Tells All.”  That was as monotone and mindless a paint job as I have ever had to do.  While the play proved to be a great piece of performance art from Ellen Burstyn, the set itself was not exactly a piece of art.

    But in the case of the Giotto fresco drops, it was Art.  We were swiftly submersed in the project, glued between our little printed renderings of Giotto’s masterpiece and the drop itself.  I soon figured out that his genius was layered not in the depth and perspective of his subjects’ bodies, which I had first seen as two-dimensional and childish, but in their expressions: the sorrow in the eyes, the grief-stretched mouths, the foreheads wrinkled in distress.  The glassy, anguished look in the Christ figure’s eyes, for instance, balanced on the most delicate line, the perfect dip and swoop of my smallest brush on a canvas the size of a building.  Drawing a line like that is nerve-wracking, but when you step back and see that you got it just right, the rush of excitement and pure satisfaction is like nothing else.  That feeling, I believe, is the essence of Art.

    Before it was finished, my fellow Assistant Charge Scenic Artist Edee and I worked on the first “Pentecost” mural for a month.  During the process, I developed a real fascination with it.  I was learning new things from it every day.  That first finished drop, if I do say so myself, was a muslin masterpiece.  We had nailed it.  However, it had taken us too long; we were not going to have time to paint the other four versions of the fresco.  So, after some heated discussions between our technical director and the administrative offices,  it was decided that we would paint only two of the remaining drops and the other two would be printed.

    If you approach it like I do, this can be a uniquely heart-wrenching profession.  Whenever a production does not go on to Broadway or a national tour, I always want to salvage the scenery.  Consequently, I try to find a corporate theater shop or a school to take it.  Usually, my efforts are in vain and the whole thing usually goes in the trash at the end of its run.  It is a merciless cycle that would make Andy Goldsworthy proud.  Nonetheless, I had high hopes for our Giotto painting.  I thought maybe we could donate it to a church or find some other place to take it.  I thought surely someone out there would want it, because it was beautiful.  More than likely I was right about that.  As it turned out, its beauty did not matter.

    The wrecking ball started to swing toward my painting the same day the printed drops were delivered.  The colors in them did not match the drops we had painted.  Usually the problem can be easily solved, by letting the scenic artists tweak the printed drops with glazes until they match the painted drops.  This time, other arrangements were made.  Somehow, instead of having us wash over the printed drops to make them match our painted one, the decision was made to simply use our first painted drop in the last scene--the scene in which a gaping hole is blown right through the center of it.  That meant that our painting was now going to be wallpapered onto a pre-constructed facade and then the entire middle cut out with razors. This would render it useless to a church, useless to save for future productions, useless for anything but the trash bin.   By the time the news of that decision trickled down to me, it was too late.

    Meanwhile, the mindless set of “Last Living Confederate Widow” was being packed into trucks and headed for new life on Broadway, an irony worthy of a Sam Shepherd play.  The rest of the shop had to tiptoe around me for weeks.  The reason for this was not specifically because I was angry (which I definitely was), but because my heart and spirit were broken. The decision to ruin what I considered to be a valuable piece of art forced me to face certain realities about what I do for a living.  Realities that, if I want to believe that what I do really means something, I need to ignore. We all want to think what we do for a living serves a higher purpose, to believe that our job is special.  Sometimes that is more of a stretch than others.  Nevertheless, there are certain places where I can be exceptionally proud of what I do, i.e. weddings, family gatherings, my high-school reunion, and other functions of that order. This is because, when I say that I make my living in the arts, the other guests tend to think that my job is exciting, fascinating, and noble.  Although scenery is my life, the truth is that scenery is just scenery.  It lives behind what really matters in theater: the actors’ performances.  But scenery is my life.

    “Pentecost” stretched a lot of my beliefs, roasting a bundle of lofty notions about my life.  I was reminded that everything I do is determined by managers, bosses, and bureaucracy, just as if I toiled at Enron or IBM or the US Government in a cubicle-dwelling vocation. I was forced to acknowledge that even though the Old Globe, like most regional theaters, is legally a public charity (which always meant more to me than simply being exempt from taxes; it meant that the Globe was obligated to foster all forms of the theatrical arts) its main concern is the bottom line.  When they decided to butcher my drop, it was like a punch in the stomach.  It took my breath away.  In view of that, I could not let the obvious irony of the situation crash over me without rebelling a little.  So while the mural was still whole, laid out on the floor of our rehearsal space awaiting its execution, I made a point of gathering the entire cast of “Pentecost” to explain the whole sad story. “What happens in the plot of your play is actually going to happen to this painting,” I told them, “It’s going to happen to me.  So use that knowledge in your performances if you can.”  A few weeks into the run, several actors, one after the other, told me that they were doing just that.  Bless their hearts, they are artists too, and they helped me catch my breath.

    During the week that “Pentecost” was going to close, I was asked to sit on a panel for an Old Globe Insights Seminar, one of the really great programs we offer to the public in San Diego.  When I walked onto the stage that night, in front of one of the printed drops that had killed my painting, I was thrilled to look out and see an audience of hundreds filling row after row.  These were thoughtful people with a genuine interest in the process of putting together a major production like “Pentecost.”  It struck me so sweetly: these people cared about what I did.
   
    It turned out to be a pivotal night in my life.  Questions were asked of the actors, of the dialects coach, and of me.  As an added bonus, two distinguished guests joined us, Steven Kern, the Curator of European Art from the San Diego Museum of Art, and Betsy Cort, a conservator at the Balboa Art Conservation Center. When they spoke about their experiences in the real world of priceless and historic art, both were effortlessly brilliant, funny, and inspirational.  They were the real deal; they were passionate not just about their work, but about all art.  When each expressed a sincere admiration for the “Pentecost” set to me, it warmed my soul in ways neither could ever understand.

    Afterward, I was able to speak with Steven Kern for a few minutes, and I asked him something that had been prodding the back of my mind all evening;  “In the end, isn’t all art temporary?”  As if he had been expecting the question, he smiled and nodded, then said:  “If it’s made from organic material, then yes.”  I pushed further:  “So eventually, even the “Mona Lisa” will fade away?”  This question made him pause for a second before he replied: “Yes.”  Sad as that thought is, it made me feel unexpectedly serene.  If the “Mona Lisa” is going to fade away, then maybe it is okay if my work, my art, and I do, too.

    “That’s how it happens livin’ life by th’ drop.”
        -Stevie Ray Vaughn

 

 The Perfect Storm

Second installment of Ken's "A Decade Later" series for the Chaffee County Times, printed in the Feb. 8 issue.

Alden and Adyson Scar

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(Editor’s note; Ken Scar is a 1987 graduate of Buena Vista High School.  He spent the last 10 years living in California, where he worked in theater, television and film.  This is the second of his columns about his move back to Buena Vista.)
--------------------------------------------

It was a terrifying choice to move from here to California.  Strangely, it was an even more terrifying one to move back.  In the 10 years I lived in San Diego, I never considered it home.  I did, however, become quite accustomed to sunshine and palm trees.  It’s not hard to get comfortable in a place where the only two seasons are sun and partly cloudy.

After our daughter, Adyson, was born, we found ourselves in a position where we could either go for it and move back while we had the means, or stay and be trapped there for who knows how long.  We made the painful choice to get the hell out, and it just happened to be the dead of winter when it all went down.
 
It’s almost exactly 1000 miles from San Diego to Buena Vista, a trip we’ve happily taken many times over the last decade.  This last passage was different, though, because this time we were coming back to stay.

As we motored out of the glowing California desert, I felt an anxiety like I’d never felt before.  Usually I’m elated as we power up over that first pass out of Los Angeles and into Las Vegas, because San Diego is behind me and my hometown is ahead, but not this time. This time our 4Runner was straining to pull a 5X8’ trailer packed solid with our belongings and as we crawled up out of the sunny southern California desert it hit me hard that I was leaving that perpetual warmth and more than a few dreams behind for good.

A terrible thought hammered me over and over:  What if I go back home and fail worse than I failed here?  Then what?

One thousand miles is a long way, but with the weight of the world and a seven-week old baby in the car with you it’s like driving in rush hour from the Earth to the Moon.  By the time we rolled into Mesquite, Nev.  I was spent, and we still had two thirds of the trip to go.  That night, the TV in our hotel room told us that a storm was moving into Utah and Colorado the next day.    Nature was matching my turmoil with its own it seemed - but I figured we could beat it.

We awoke early the next morning and put the pedal to the metal.  Twelve hours later, we made it into Glenwood Springs, Co. just as the snow began to fall.  The storm was catching up to us.

The next day chain laws were in effect on Vail Pass, so first thing in the morning we would have to try Battle Mountain Pass from Minturn into Leadville.  By 9:00 a.m. Interstate 70 through Glen Canyon was not pretty.  As we pulled off into Minturn, it only go worse; two to three inches of icy slush skinned the road from side to side.    We debated whether or not we should push on and in our road-weary delirium we decided, what the hell, let’s go for it!

If it were a movie the next scene would have gone like this:

[ INT. Ken and Nichole's 4Runner, DAY:

Ken sucks in a lung full of Rocky Mountain winter air and down shifts his mighty V-6 engine into low gear - mountain climbin’ gear!  His reasonably priced Costco tires churn through the snow, somehow finding enough road underneath all that icy mess to propel them forward.

“Yeah, baby!”  he howls like a Viking

Once again, mankind is fixin' to whup Nature's pasty white ass, UNTIL . . .

CUT TO:

EXT.  Reality. COLD WINTER'S DAY:]

I think we made it about 100 feet past the first switchback before we fishtailed like a sick trout into the ditch.

Now, I’ve done some shameful things in my life.  Shameful things.  But as a proud Colorado native nothing – and I mean nothing – compares to sitting there immobilized on the first switchback up Battle Mountain Pass, hazard lights blinking pitifully, California license plates telegraphing to every car that passes by:  “Here’s another nimrod stuck in the snow!”

That, my friends, is degradation on a level that’s not even funny later at dinner parties.

We had to sit there for over an hour before my father-in-law could come rescue us. I spent that time clenching the steering wheel and grinding my teeth to the thup thup of the windshield wipers;  “Welcome back to #&%*@! Colorado, genius.”

The alarmed cries of our friends and family when we told them we’d decided to go for it and move back rang in my ears:  “Are you kidding?  What are you going to do for work?!”,  thup thup,  “What about your career?” thup thup, “You know it’s not easy to make it in BV, don’t you?” thup thup,  “It’s not the same town you grew up in - only wealthy retired people can live there anymore” thup thup, thup thup.

It dawned on me that very few people in our lives had been positive about his move.  I began to wonder – seriously wonder - if this move might be the stupidest thing I’d ever done.

Ultimately, we had to move despite my newfound reservations.  It was too late to turn back and, eventually, thanks to my father-in-law’s beastly 4X4, we did get over the pass and finally limped into Buena Vista about  a day later than originally planned.

We spent the next day in an exhausted stupor unpacking and lugging all our stuff into the new rental.  My wife and I were in the throws of arranging when my mom called.  “The Light Parade is in half and hour and I thought Alden might want to go.”  (Alden was our then three-year-old son.)

Light Parade?  I’d never heard of it, but we decided getting out into some sort of civilization again might do us some good.

The storm we’d been battling for the last three days was just starting to get its fingertips into BV.  It was a bitter 15 degrees as we loaded the kids into the car and a powdered sugaring of snow was beginning to fall over everything in our brand new world.

“Fucking lovely,” I thought.

We spent the two-minute drive to town in rigid silence and were barely pulling onto Main Street when Alden noticed the police cars parked on either side of the railroad tracks, lights flashing.

 “Police man cars!” he exclaimed.  He’d always been fascinated with them, but in San Diego the sight of them was always sort of ominous for me.  On this night, however, I got a totally different vibe from them right away.  It didn’t register at first but it was welcoming, like the gates of Oz.  I felt something wonderful was beyond.

Alden smiled and waved at the policemen as we parked our car and walked over the tracks.

Despite the cold winter's night, there was a crowd of smiling people down both sides of the street.  Kids were running around everywhere, chasing each other, sliding on the ice, doing snow angles in the middle of Main Street.  Maybe I was just tired, but at that moment everything seemed to slow down as I watched.  The snowflakes fell more gently, and every sound became muffled, except the chiming laughter of children and the powdery squeaks of their shoes milling the fresh fallen snow.

 “Fire trucks, Daddy!”  Alden's excited voice pierced my bubble.  “They’re coming!”

Indeed they were, rumbling toward us from the other end of Main Street – huge, red machines with their brilliant lights sweeping through the flurries, big tires crunching over the snow-packed street.

Fire trucks are majestic anyway but at night, in the snow . . . they are glorious, just glorious.  Alden was awestruck, and so was I.  I thought, “Whoever thought to have this celebration should get a medal.”

As the parade made its way past, handfuls of candy began raining down on us and why not?  A parade is a parade, even in the snow.  We dove in and dug for every sweet nugget we could find.  Alden had so much fun he didn’t notice he was cold until the last float rolled by.

That’s when he finally turned to look at me, as if he suddenly remembered that I was still there with him. With rosy red cheeks and big bright eyes he exclaimed, “I’m cold, daddy!”

“I’ll bet you are,” I laughed, “Let’s go get warm.”

So we went over to Jan’s Restaurant, where we were greeted by kind waitresses who cooed over our baby daughter and sweet-talked Alden as he munched a toasty grilled cheese sandwich.  The cold fell off of him in layers, leaving him hungry and happy – and tired.  It had been a night fit for a prince.  A perfect Buena Vista night that I know will forever float like a snowflake in my son’s memory – and in mine.

They say you have to take chances in life if you want to succeed.  My wife and I took a huge risk moving back here, a risk that didn’t waste any time sinking it’s teeth into us through the icy slush of Battle Mountain.  Funny, though, that it was in the tail end of that very storm that I found myself watching magic happen on Main Street and in the eyes of my son.   Maybe it was just the frazzled frame of mind I was in, but I’m telling you that light parade was a spiritual, ethereal thing.   It’s what this town, this state, this nation, maybe even humanity itself, exists for.  If God really did design this world we live in, then the night of the Light Parade was a proud moment for him – because nights like that are the reason he created children.

As for me, I’ve discovered enchantment still exists in snowstorms and small towns just like I remember it – so I can relax a little.  I think my gamble’s going to pay off big-time.