Blue, Blue, Blue
...
Robb's full time job, as far as I'm concerned, is his recovery. I, on the other hand, run the paint shop for a large regional theater. Right now, we're building gigantic scenery for a production of George Bernard Shaw's Heartbreak House. Lots and lots and lots of blue scenery.
I featured photos of an earlier phase of the project here.
Unlike our old shop, which burned to the ground two summers ago, our new scenic studios are wonderfully airy and spacious. Still, we have to think creatively when we go to "pack" the shop.
After we painted the stage floor, we left it in place, covered it with protective paper, brought in a herd of sawhorses, and textured and painted the smaller walls. Once those were completed, we stacked them against the shop walls, and brought in the "header" pieces.
These things are huge. We wanted to paint the headers all at once, so that they would look essentially seamless when we installed them in the theater. These things are large two-dimensional arches, which -- for stability -- we flipped upside-down.
To get the headers to fit in the shop, we assembled them into four rows or corridors. We shored them up with stage jacks, bolted them together, and then attached bracing across the tops.
Once they were in place, my little army of painters turned them blue. We had to move quickly, so that we could manipulate the paint before it dried. In this photo, you see Andrew rollering on the paint in an irregular pattern, Sheri tapping out the roller marks with a large pad of cheesecloth, and Cricket, Ryan and Gaby further smoothing out the paint with large lay-in brushes. (Actually, you really can't see Cricket, she's hidden behind Ryan's legs.)
Robb's full time job, as far as I'm concerned, is his recovery. I, on the other hand, run the paint shop for a large regional theater. Right now, we're building gigantic scenery for a production of George Bernard Shaw's Heartbreak House. Lots and lots and lots of blue scenery.
I featured photos of an earlier phase of the project here.
Unlike our old shop, which burned to the ground two summers ago, our new scenic studios are wonderfully airy and spacious. Still, we have to think creatively when we go to "pack" the shop.
After we painted the stage floor, we left it in place, covered it with protective paper, brought in a herd of sawhorses, and textured and painted the smaller walls. Once those were completed, we stacked them against the shop walls, and brought in the "header" pieces.
These things are huge. We wanted to paint the headers all at once, so that they would look essentially seamless when we installed them in the theater. These things are large two-dimensional arches, which -- for stability -- we flipped upside-down.
To get the headers to fit in the shop, we assembled them into four rows or corridors. We shored them up with stage jacks, bolted them together, and then attached bracing across the tops.
Once they were in place, my little army of painters turned them blue. We had to move quickly, so that we could manipulate the paint before it dried. In this photo, you see Andrew rollering on the paint in an irregular pattern, Sheri tapping out the roller marks with a large pad of cheesecloth, and Cricket, Ryan and Gaby further smoothing out the paint with large lay-in brushes. (Actually, you really can't see Cricket, she's hidden behind Ryan's legs.)
Comments
(I'm not in any of the pictures, because I'm the one holding the camera.)
Do you perchance know Beth Zeigler? She was the scenic artist at SJRT and she and I also worked together in NY.