December 1993 - W.E.T. Studios: Murals and Messages by Louis M. Brill
"I am a big believer in craft work having an integrity of its own."

These are the words by which George Mead works and lives. As founder of San Francisco's W.E.T. (Westcoast Entertainment Technographics) Studios, a fine arts painter, a community organizer and a successful business person, Mead has combined all these interests into a single activity: painting large images on the sides of buildings, stage sets, vans and art boards. Although the bulk of W.E.T. Studios work is high profile entertainment, Mead's work has covered a spectrum of canvasses from low income housing beautification projects to Hollywood movie sets.

Mead studied fine art at Antioch College, Yellow Springs, OH, (BFA '74) specializing in photo-realism and scenic art, and he earned his MFA in 1976 from the California College of Arts and Crafts. Guided by his philosophy of artistic expression combined with social involvement, Mead felt ultimately that public art should reflect its process of creation. It should be seen as successful not only if it's esthetically pleasing, but if it also reflects the process of involvement by the community.

It was at this time Mead began his public art career working with young and elderly people creating a series of community involvement projects painting murals of the life and times of communities on the walls of the neighborhoods. Mead's involvement with community mural projects blossomed into at least six or seven neighborhoods, each with a mural affecting the local environment.

In 1976, through a National Endowment For The Arts grant, Mead created a 90 x 35 ft. wall painting in Oakland that was billed at that time as the largest single mural west of the Mississippi River. The image, a sprouting acorn, rises against a backdrop of symbols of Oakland's history and culture. Perhaps the single, best compliment paid to his social murals was in San Francisco's low-income Valencia Gardens housing project.

"My murals were put up in 1974, they're still there, and after all these years, there's no graffiti on them."

PUBLIC ART TO PRIVATE ENTERPRISE

From social murals Mead began working for major Hollywood studios designing backdrops for movie sets. After a year of Hollywood, Mead struck out on his own doing outdoor sign and mural work. He started in 1983, with a dual garage studio in Berkeley, and has successively established three larger spaces over the years. In 1992, Mead moved into his current, 8000 sq. ft. studio.

Mead's commercial work consists of convention displays, advertising, murals and rock 'n roll sets. His corporate clients include Tower Records, the San Francisco Opera, the Palace Hotel, Amnesty International, L.A. Gear, Visa, Big Heart City Club, The Maltese Grill, Walt Disney Studios and Apple Computers.

But that's only on the corporate side, on the entertainment side, W.E.T. Studios has created set designs and backdrops for Mick Jagger, The Who, Santana, Grateful Dead, U2, the Tubes, Wham!, Journey and Jefferson Starship, to name a few. With many of his stage sets as backdrops for touring rock 'n roll shows, W.E.T.Studios work has traveled all over the US and Europe. Usually they create the backdrops or drapery for live performance stage sets.

"We did some huge sound wings for Billy Joel's concert. Sound wings being these huge scrim flags used to cover speaker systems. They were so happy with the set that they made an entire video about the stage crew installing the big paintings we'd done. Consequently, one evening I was watching television and was pleasantly surprised to see that video and watch as my scrims went right up."

Perhaps the W.E.T. Studios most visible account -- both literally and figuratively -- is the side of the Tower Records building on Columbus Avenue in San Francisco, CA. For years W.E.T. Studios has been creating 6 x 6 ft. art boards of popular albums and CDs on the Tower building facade. One of Mead's longest standing accounts, he estimates that in the previous 13 years of supplying art boards, W.E.T. Studios has painted and hung over 3000 album covers, which is tantamounnt to saying that they have probably documented a good portion of the history of rock 'n roll's musical success.

That particular Tower Records store sells more records on a per sq. ft. basis than any other in the US, according to Mead. He estimates that Tower puts up about 20 new album covers a month. Two off-handed compliments to his Tower Record signs: They never get graffitied, and people occasionally try to steal them.

As W.E.T. Studios grew in size and stature as a mural and signshop, so did its crew. Jeff Sadowski, production coordinator and lead airbrush artist has been with the company since 1983. For Sadowski, joining W.E.T. Studios was a dream come true.

"I always have been an artist doing pencil sketches, pen water colors and airbrush. My dream was always to do album covers."

And that dream has come true, literally and in a big way. With airbrush as the main tool of the trade, Sadowski says W.E.T. Studios' crew commands an excellent control of both medium and message in projects ranging from album reproductions to large scale stage sets. He particularly likes the delicacy airbrushing offers in fine detail, "it's really good for reproductions of people's faces, which we do a lot of as we create many album covers that often include the artists on the covers."

Facial color is a great challenge and Sadowski's technique for capturing skin tones as photo realistically as possible is not much different than standard color reproduction.

"We do a four-color separation where we layer the colors on almost like a photo separation. We put the cadmium yellow on first, the red oxide second, then burnt umber and finally black. You can get almost any face coloring you want just by how you combine these four colors."

Sadowski says W.E.T. can reproduce any picture, set design or album cover to whatever size the client needs, but most importantly, he credits the quality of the Studios' work with capturing business.

"I don't know where else you can find this kind of quality, in terms of the kind of work we do. I don't think there's anybody that really comes close. I've worked at some of the major studios in L.A., and none of them use airbrush to this detail on the size drops that we do."

Depending on the client's needs backdrops could range from stage sets (textaline, scrim or muslin) to outdoor displays on framed birch or lauan board, to the sides of vehicles. Their preference is to paint within the studio.

As for that special project, Sadowski hit the jackpot when W.E.T. Studios did Mick Jagger's floor sets for one of his tours. The perfect cap was when Jagger showed up to check out the floor.

Although some projects have a two-to-three week turnaround, there are others with an eight-hour deadline and some with the classic, "need this yesterday" requests. But no matter the timeline, Mead says with pride, "...in 13 years we've never been late on completing a project".

For all the work that is done at W.E.T. Studios, the real joy is when the assignment calls for an original design. One of Mead's recent creations was the stage for Grateful Dead's '92 concert tour, which has led to yet another collaboration with the group. In another project for Tower Records, this time in Mexico City, Mead is creating a complete, ground-to-roof mural illuminating the interior of a building.

"After spending most of our time reproducing other designs, everyone here likes the opportunity to be creatively involved in original work," says Sadowski. "Any time we can design something like a poster, a backdrop, a mural, or even a t-shirt, and see our own original work out and about San Francisco is very exciting for us. We like original assignments and we are happy that we're getting a lot more of them."

Mead is very conscious of both form and function and how it influences the murals he creates. Although a fine artist by nature, he feels at a certain point everything is art, and pop art epitomizes that sensibility.

"I was influenced most by the idea that imagery must be accessible, but that not all imagery is that way. Pop art became an inspiration to me, because it is a way of looking at our lives differently," says Mead.

"In other words, when you take a soup can put in on a shelf and call it art, you're actually questioning your perceptions and preconceived notions about what things are art and what aren't. Someone once asked Picasso about what is art, and he replied brusquely. 'what isn't art.'"