February 15, 1985 - Wet Paint Studios' Larger Than Life Art by Alan Lipton

BERKELEY– In the strange bayside neighborhood of North Berkeley, where historic renovation meets industrial ghetto, almost anything is possible. Each new block holds some unexpected secret. You might walk down an alley, for instance, gazing casually through an open door and straight into the huge faces of Phil and Don Everly and Earl Klugh, and at the massive logos for Amadeus and Yanks. There are two possible explanations. You're either a Lilliputian visiting Tower Records, or you've reached the home of Wet Paint Studios.

While the name might not be familiar, the products certainly ought to be. Did you ever wonder about the origin of those big album jackets on the wall of Tower Records' North Beach store in San Francisco? Or the sets used by Journey, The Motels, and the Stones on recent tours? Or even backstage at the Bammies? Wet Paint Studios is the signature on all these monumental projects.

"I don't know where else you can find this kind of quality," says George Mead, the man behind the airbrush. "I'm not trying to brag about the artists who work here, but I think we really do top-notch work. Obviously, when you get involved with a business you learn who your competitors are. And most of those shops are for specific purposes. The San Francisco Opera shop, the ACT shop, they're tied into one particular thing. FM Productions and Nomad do this type of thing, but their specialty is more set building than painting. In terms of the type of work that we do, I don't think there's anybody that really comes close. I've worked at some of the major studios in LA, and none of them use airbrush to this detail on this size drop."

The words may sound a bit boastful, but George Mead is a soft-spoken, purposeful man who is so obviously dedicated to his art that no boasting is necessary. He comes from a solid background in photo realism and scenic art, which he studied at Antioch College. "When I came out to California looking for a masters program, there was nothing going on with any community involvement in the art colleges," he says. "So I went out and got grants, and started painting murals in the community." For five years, George specialized in environmental upgrading: large-scale works involving children and senior citizens, funded by agencies like the California Arts Council. "This philosophically ties in with my idea of what I want to do with my life. To get a little esoteric, it's not the piece I'm doing; it's the way I live while I'm doing it, the people I'm involved with, the way I run my shop. . ."

But MFA programs and government grants can't last forever, and in 1978 George Mead went to work as a set painter for FM Productions, then owned by Bill Graham. "I played music for eleven years, as well," George explains, "so going capitalist in the music service industry was an easy crossover." But rock and roll is one of those industries in which the deadline is generally yesterday, and working 75-hour weeks proved to be a little too much. 1979 saw a move down to the Southland for a year of set painting with Paramount, Warner Brothers, and MCA, as well as some product for the major casinos.

When he returned to the Bay Area in 1980, George's resume connected him to a little business named Art for Art's Sake, primarily because Art himself was eager to get out of his contract for painting Tower Records' giant advertising boards. "In order for those paintings to be profitable, from projecting and tracing to airbrushing. they have to be completed in a day and a half at most. It's a hard nut to crack, and it takes some pretty good training. What I do with those boards isn't really art," he explains, "it's craft work. It brought some steady bread and butter into a really hand to mouth existence."

No matter what the painting is, whether it's a comparatively small ad board or an enormous state set for Alvin & The Chipmunks or The Who, it has to be painted somewhere. For awhile, Wet Paint Studios fit the definition "garage artists," by by 1981, enought bread and butter had come in to create the ideal garage. "We started with a gray, corrugated steel building, just a shell," says George. "I've worked in a lot of studios, so we basically took all the best elements and incorporated them into my studio. I designed it with John Stolurow, the owner of the building, and he realized it." Studio features include a 21-foot ceiling with fans and a 10 x 12 skylights, wall pockets with sliding glass doors for northern light, color-balanced bulbs for warm or cool light, a floating floor with compressor hoses running beneath it, a good sound system, and separate rooms for paint mixing, drafting, offices, and a shower. And if a set in progress occasionally happens to outgrow these 2400 square feet, there are always other options, such as renting out Winterland, where a Journey set and several others were created during a few months in 1983.

"This year," the owner of Wet Paint Studios says, "I'm trying to take the business seriously -- I've just hired a promotional manager and put out a brochure -- as opposed to just kind of floating along and enjoying myself. There are now certain projects that I can't afford to take on anymore, because as a real business our overhead is just getting too high. I'm sure this will be good news for the garage artists who can live on lower bids. I think in the end I'd like to see this business self-supporting without me, and I can just go off and do my fine art paintings again."

With projects for Macy's California and Wilkes Bashford already under his belt, that end might not be very far off. But in the middle of all this talk about outgrowing the music business, George Mead smiles quietly and turns to a favorite page in his portfolio, saying, "This is a photo realistic painting of some rocks -- I took the photo up at Point Arena -- and believe it or not, I was going to attach a big three-dimensional roll up in this corner . . ."