Art Chowder November | December 2016, Issue 6 | Page 37

In my student days at the Art Institute of Seattle, I had ambitions of being a famous illustrator of book covers and record
albums, then retiring at about 45 to spend the rest of my life
doing modest sized easel paintings. Murals never crossed my
mind.
Oh, every now and then I wondered if some future Pope might
consider me if he had another ceiling in Rome, and I thought
it might be fun to do some bucolic mural for a craft brewery or
farmer’s market. But I never wanted it to be a career.
After I left the Art Institute, I returned to my home town of
Great Falls and advertised myself as a freelance artist. I have
no memory of how I got contacted by the manager of an indoor swimming pool to paint palm trees on one of their walls.
They wanted something simple, “in earth tones,” and I drew up
a few cartoon like, intentionally asymmetrical palm trees that
I thought I could whip out in a day. I asked for $150, which
would be $325 in today’s money, and hoped they wouldn’t
think I was gouging them. I had no idea at the time how much
muralists typically get paid. I was just relieved to hear them
accept my terms.
I had no scaffold or ladder of my own, so they set up two ladders with a plank that could hook onto the rungs. I felt jittery at
first, but I quickly got used to it.

I learned a lot of valuable lessons from that mural. First, you
can’t dilute latex paint; it’s already runny and more transparent than you might like. Secondly, you can’t work with foam
brushes; the paint simply squirts out of them. And finally, always give the client an estimate of three times as much time as
you think you’ll need, because that’s how long it will take. This
“one-day” job ended up taking three.

When I got a notice that my design was accepted, I thought I
had bought a ticket to a blazing future of wealth and fame. This
job paid $1,100 (about $1,850 today), and I thought that was
a fortune. It made up for the lack of running water, the filthy,
unprepared wall, the bicyclists hurtling down the sidewalk of
Division whether they saw me or not, and worst of all, my own
inexperience.

I had no reason to expect to do any future murals, but six years
later, when I had moved to Spokane, there I was getting one,
and in one of the most heavily trafficked intersections in town.
I was teaching at the Art Institute at the time, and when I received a prospectus for a future mural on the corner of Sprague
and Division, I decided to apply.

My idea was to show one large marmot spread across the Division side, another standing near the corner, and the heads of
two other marmots, on the Division side and one filling up the
Sprague side. On my sketch, the marmots were smaller than
actual marmots; I had no idea how bizarre they would look on
a large scale.

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