Art Chowder November | December 2016, Issue 6 | Page 38

The big marmot on the Sprague side has a
head nearly twenty feet high, and it didn’t actually look much like a marmot.

As I was perched on a ladder painting it, some teenagers drove by and
honked their horn; “Hey, you!” One
said, “Is that a gorilla?”

I turned around and said, “No. It’s not a gorilla,” then went back to work, trying to make it
look more like a rodent and less like a primate.

He took another look at the paperwork. “Well, I’ll be damned. We didn’t.
You’re lucky you didn’t tip over.”
Mural painting has a lot of dangers they don’t teach you about in art
school. After gravity, the greatest threat is crime. I once had the scaffold I borrowed from a paint shop stolen. Fortunately, I wasn’t on the
site at the time, but I had to pay for a new one, which meant I made no
profit on that wall.
At least I never worked on a mural at night in a building that was being
burglarized. That happened to the brothers Todd and Cain Benson at
three in the morning. They heard suspicious sounds outside, but the
burglar seems to have given up.

I had a three-week time frame to complete
the work, but I got it done in only two. I had
no idea how long a mural takes, so I made it
as simple as possible, and covered only about
two thirds of the Sprague wall. It got me in the
papers and it got me on the TV news, but for
21 years I couldn’t pass it without wishing I
had put a little more time and preparation into
it.

I was with them while they were working on the enormous mural on the
Maple Street Bridge. I visited them one night when they were near the
end. The city had blocked one lane so they could work under intense,
hot lights. I crossed when I could, to see it from the other side, and
nearly got killed by those cars hurtling at freeway speed. But the real
danger came while I was chatting with them. We noticed rocks hitting
the sidewalk, and looked up to see kids throwing them.

Soon I learned another important lesson
about murals: they lead to other murals, but
they don’t lead to more sales of easel paintings. I expected people to want a small painting by “the guy who did the railroad mural in
Hillyard,” but nobody did. Fortunately,though,
I was able to get more and more commissions
all over Spokane. Some I had to suspend when
the weather turned cold, and return to in the
spring. For obvious reasons, I preferred indoor
murals. The best mural job I received was in
the Spokane Airport, for a 22 by 26-foot wall
in a prominent position. I could only work at
night, which was fine with me; it meant my
classes and other freelance work never got in
the way.
As murals go, that one was not especially stressful. I did get a bit jittery doing the
higher parts on the scaffold I had rented; there
were times I could swear it would tip over. One
returning passenger on his way out asked,
“Where are the outriggers?”

I and a friend were on our bicycles, and as we were riding home, we
noticed those same kids lurking nearby. I got off my bike, leaned over
the rail, and shouted “Officer! Officer! The kids throwing the rocks are
over here!” That made them high-tail it out of there.

“They didn’t give me any,” I replied. “Well,
they should have. I think that’s an OSHA violation.”
But it couldn’t be. This scaffold must be safe, I
reasoned, while I kept as close to the wall as
possible.
When I finally brought it back, and paid my
fine for returning it late, the renter asked,
“Where are the outriggers?”
 “You didn’t give
me any,” I said.

38 ART CHOWDER MAGAZINE

Todd and Cain ran after them, but couldn’t find them.

It was a non-commissioned work of street art that got Todd Benson into
murals. An architect with ambitions to be an easel painter, Todd and
his brother did a piece of political “street art” in Hillyard that caught
the eye of a developer in Kendall Yards, who hired them to paint in
two indoor buildings. Since then, they have done several prominent
photo-realistic murals, notably on the corner of Second and Maple, the
Local 238 union building, and, most prominently, the interior of the
Spokane Arena.
In the years to come, there are sure to be more and more Benson brothers murals all around Spokane. Todd tells me he only wants to do about
twenty more before he retires to the easel. Then some younger artist
or team of artists will be painting the town. I plan to quit outdoor murals by the time I’m 60 (four years from now), but may do indoor ones
another ten years if I get the commissions. It’s not a job for the elderly.
They say if you have to take a shower in the morning, before you go to
work, you’re a white collar worker, and if you have to take one in the
afternoon, when you come home, you’re a blue collar worker. Until I did
murals, I didn’t realize that I was a blue-collar artist. But I can’t be one
for long. This is one blue collar job that will never be supplanted by
automation, but it will — and must — be replenished by young blood.

TOM QUINN

Originally from Great Falls, Montana, Tom Quinn grew up surrounded by art -- mostly nostalgic celebrations of the Old West
by the likes of Charles M. Russell and Frederick Remington. He
found there was more to art by the time he attended Gonzaga
University and spent his junior year in Florence, the home of
Michelangelo and Botticelli. There he became enamored of the
serene beauty of Renaissance painting.