Cool stuff.
Posted by Duncan Wilkie (Member # 132) on :
Mind boggling.
Posted by Tim Barrow (Member # 576) on :
When I was younger my ex wife's family was from Long Island,..we'd go up about twice to three times a year and I always made it a point to go into the city,...well at the time I was doing wall work for RJR and 3m throughout the southeast and the guys who painted in times square were always my idols,...Once i got to talk to a couple of them while they were on break and it was amazing how much the work they did was like the work I was doing,..only on a larger scale and with a bigger audience. well time passed and a couple of the techniques they showed me that day came in kinda handy and I suddenly realized why they were doing things the way they were,..I never will forget the tips they gave me so willingly that day,....
Posted by Dennis Kiernan (Member # 12202) on :
You must know that one of the Times Square billboard artists from the 60s, James Rosenquist, went on to become one of the leading artists in the country, with wall-sized paintings that go for a million and more.
Posted by Craig Sjoquist (Member # 4684) on :
There website is filled with awesome work indeed wow.
Posted by Bill Diaz (Member # 2549) on :
Yes sir, that takes some huge ????s!!
50 mph winds in L.A.= 100mph in Illinois. Even then there are few around here still hand painted.
He forgot to mention when vinyl gives away on a project that large, you've got a mess. With paint you can paint over to change the ad. Therefore you have the huge digital printed banners, but I don't think painted ones will ever disappear.
The whole time I'm watchin' that, though, I'm thinkin' about earthquakes and hopin' our people don't have to go through what the Japanese are goin' through. Bless their heart for going through it all with the dignity they have displayed. There's several lessons to be learned from it all, but at a tragic cost. But a strong quake with those guys up there would be horrific.
Tim, why don't you relay your story about falling in the Kudzu. That was funny beyond funny.
Posted by Tim Barrow (Member # 576) on :
If you insist Bill,...here goes,...
It was the second day on the first job I got as a billboard painter after finishin' up my initial training at local general outdoor firm,.The guy was a contractor and he needed a helper,..well we dragged our swing stage up this hill and had to maneuver it around and under one side of the billboard and thru the kudzu on our hands and knees as the billboard was built into the side of the hill at an angle and the side we rigged from had hole in the kudzu just big enough to crawl under the sign on your hands and knees beside the apron onto the catwalk,...well we painted the board that day and finished up early about 3 pm,..well the kudzu had grown up to the catwalk and out of the corner of my eye it looked like solid ground,...we started on the left side with the first swing and then went to the right side on the second swing for the 10'x 40' sign.Once we finished up the right side the boss said jokingly,.."Tim step back and tell me how it looks,.." Well being the second day on the job I did not want to disappoint my new boss and I looked over and saw green foliage about six inches beneath the catwalk and I stepped off to get back far enough to get a better look at our handy work,....Was I in for a sudden surprise,.,.Seems one side of this billboard was about two feet off the ground at the bottom, but the other seeing as it was built into the hillside was almost two stories off the ground. guess which side I stepped off of,..,
Seems the kudzu had grown up over the tops of several tree tops and was so thick that spring day it looked solid enough to walk on,..boy was I wrong!
There was this piece of conduit on the way down that stopped me,..kinda,... as I sat there in pain straddling this one inch halogen light fixture like a kid ridding his imaginary stick horse (in a great deal of pain no less due to severe bruising of parts of my anatomy I won't mention here) I almost had time to sigh and think that was close,..this was not to be the case,...as in the corner of my eye I saw the metal strap holding the conduit in place slowly start to pry the nails holding it and me in suspension loose. Well just about the time the thought "this is gonna hurt" crossed my mind the nails came loose and I swung upside down and was looking up at the "T" backet of the conduit that was suspending me and the light fixture now,...I almost had a chance to let a sigh of relief out when that "t" bracket started to slowly crack from the sudden stress my weight was inflicting,...as it finally broke into about three pieces the last thing I remember was me and the light fixture falling and the sign flying away from me at a very rapid rate, then this small hole in the kudzu up overhead that me and the light had made ,....I can still hear that light fixture busting up under my rump as I hit the ground,...I woke up later to the boss's wife who had just shown up as we finished asking me where it hurt and to let her look and make sure I wasn't hurt,... I told her(name left out here to avoid embarrassment) "C*****Y just go away",...to this she became indignant and said "Tim that ain't no way to be I'm just trying to help!" to this I replied "OK then" and started undoing my belt and taking off my jeans to check for embedded glass in my backside, she ran away red faced and embarrassed while her husband liked to have fell off the catwalk above laughing so hard,....
at least that's my story and I'm sticking to it,...
[ March 20, 2011, 03:28 PM: Message edited by: Tim Barrow ]
Posted by jack wills (Member # 521) on :
My highest job was 270' at Hiram Walker, distillery in Illinois. Two of us were 30 ft from where a lightning strike hit on a October afternoon...
Posted by Bill Diaz (Member # 2549) on :
thanks Tim! still laughing. It's about 10 times funnier hearing you tell it in person, though.
Jack, you must be one tough customer cause I know what October can bring in Illinois. I'd have had to have an afternoon of tasting at that distillery before I'd get up that high. You're lucky to still be with us!
[ March 21, 2011, 06:31 AM: Message edited by: Bill Diaz ]
Posted by bill riedel (Member # 607) on :
You have to have the highest respect for these guys, both in bravery and artistic creativity. Bill
Posted by Kelly Thorson (Member # 2958) on :
Nice to see some fresh young very talented blood in the industry!
Posted by Brent Logan (Member # 6587) on :
Cool video. They made me wear one of those safety harnesses last fall when I did a repaint on a casino sign. I hate those things.
Dennis, I got to meet Rosenquist when I was doing signs for an art museum back in the '80's. My father-in-law who was a signpainter had an old Life Magazine with Rosenquist on the cover. I gave him the magazine to autograph and we talked about signs for a while. He told me some stories about about painting in Times Square. I love his work.
