A scrim for the dancers

                                         A STAGE SCRIM FOR DANCERS
                                                         (Las Vegas)

This project was one of only two I wanted to quit halfway through. I bid it
far too low and it was bigger than I had figured. At 26 feet tall and 64 feet wide my studio could almost not accommodate it! We built a giant easel out of pvc. It had to be airbrushed and giant stencils cut from cardboard.

The easel had to be angled diagonally just to fit in the studio. It took most
of the instructional space I used for teaching.

My forte was murals and faux surfaces for homes and businesses. So this was way beyond my expertise. A scrim is like a screen and it's see through,
made of cotton. As the paint hit the scrim delivered by a quart cup gun, it got heavier.

It had to be moved up and down the giant easel. We could never see the whole thing at once. The studio floor was covered in plastic and it started looking good about half way through. Okay...”Let's do it!” We dismantled
the easel. We laid that monster on the floor and began shooting again.
Mostly only black paint was required by now. Exhausted I left it on the
floor and closed up shop for the night so it could dry. Next day I discover
it had puddled underneath and dried! Can you imagine taking a toothbrush to the back inch by inch to remove excess dry paint inch by
inch so that the scrim would once again be see through?

Kind of funny to look back at but at the time it was overwhelming!

I don't want to mention the name of the hotel on the Las Vegas strip but I will tell you this. After they got that thing hung it was not straight at the
bottom.
Ugh! I got a phone call. It felt like a “get your ass back here and make it straight.”

But actually they were very nice about it. Like I said, we were never able to see the whole thing at once. We had no idea that the bottom black line
was zigging and zagging. There had been rumors for some time that this particular hotel was going to be imploded.

I knew some people who worked there. Everybody wondered
about their future employment. When I got there the stage curtains were closed and a meeting was about to take place in the showroom.

I was behind the curtain,

no one in the large audience knew I was there. It was a meeting between the hotel GM and the employees. I could hear the speaker talking about
the rumors of implosion. He emphatically announced that it would not happen! He said "We can't afford the dynamite!"

I laughed to myself. Thinking "he's just trying to keep them calm."

Fast forward to today. It's decades later. That hotel still proudly stands!