“Spraying and Relocating!” from Randy Wong-Westbrooke

This last week has been full of new things. Scenic art is full of so many tricks and techniques to achieve the faux finishes and textures we create onstage. To recreate the texture and sheen of a rod iron fence, we mixed graphite with black paint and applied the gloppy mixture onto the wooden cutout. Once dry, you’d sand away and most of the graphite remains giving that sheen. A coat of sealer is needed unless you want the graphite to rub off on everyone’s hands and costumes.

Next with my final design for the Juneteenth Banner getting approved on Friday, we started to mix colors and put them into air powered paint spray guns. I only worked with a spray gun once last summer at Cal Shakes, but I will say that I hardly remember anything. There are a lot of bits and pieces to keep track of when assembling the gun and a few knobs that control the amount of air being used, the amount of paint, and the nozzle. It will definitely take practice. Next we learned out to square a drop on the paint frame – also a new tool and method. Because the banner is long, but narrow, we got a feel for how to spray on paint evenly on the excess muslin underneath the final.  However, even before we started on the final we had to learn how to drive the lifts. Having not driven a car in nine months it was hard to get back into it with no help from the joystick controls. Once we were lined up though, I will say I was more comfortable spraying than driving.

This project is on hold until I return after this week. For the main season set pieces, the paint shop has not been overwhelmed the last couple weeks and my charge, Gabriel, has set me up with Rick Anderson in the Scenic Design Studio to help him with some model boxes. I also haven’t built any model boxes in about eight-nine months so I was nervous. I was expecting him to say this is how I want you to build a ¼” model of the Bowmer, but instead he gave me the printouts and two already built, yet slightly different older boxes to compare with. I was free to go about it however I wanted and that is liberating, yet also nerve wracking. It took some getting used to being in a different space without the tools I’m familiar with. I did discover, however, that the larger shell of the theater is fairly similar to the proscenium stage we have back at Ithaca College, minus the proscenium part obviously. Today I will probably be working on making the clouds above the stage and the walls with boxes for lighting on the sides of the theater. It’s really neat to look around at Richard Hay’s immense collection of art, history, theater, and design books filling up the shelves around me while I hold some glued pieces together to dry. Let’s hope I’m keeping up a good pace!

“Three Royal Thrones” from Erik LaDue

And so we are settled!

Painstakingly, I have crafted thee royal thrones. I feel like I’m the king of the ½” world! I’d take a seat on my royal seats, but then I’d undo a three days of labor.

While working on my micro work, I’ve been keeping an eye on the macro. I’ve been interviewing established designers to get an idea of what I ought to be working towards after my tenure with OSF is completed. Most narratives have a similar spine: work hard, designing as often as possible, then go get a Master in Fine Arts at a school that connects with you. It’s fairly simple. I’m surprised to find that many designers currently in active, established careers did not do any sort of internships or fellowships in the gap between their undergraduate and M.F.A. programs.

I’ve done three so far.

Of course, no two paths of life are the same. But it does give me pause to think: “All I have to do is keep designing?” Bring prolific in art makes a career out of it. So what is OSF in relation to what I was always doing, designing? Back to my royal thrones: I would never have conceived building anything like these before coming to OSF. I probably would have given up and moved on to another project, avoided having to construct these model pieces all together. Further expanding my mind are the technological advanced that OSF is utilizing: I already know that it is vital that I master a 3-D computer drafting program. It would also help to start saving up for a 3-D printer…

If nothing else, I will leave OSF with a higher bar for excellence.