November 7,1985 - The Artist Behind Those Big Backdrops by Barbara Bladen

Have you ever come around the corner of Bay and Columbus in San Francisco and been confronted by a 40-foot-high portrait of a rock star or a car reproduction above the parking lot of Tower Records so large, so real and so lifelike that it startled you?

And how about those painted backdrops at rock concerts for Jefferson Starship, Journey, The Motels, The Who and scores of others that are so dynamic, dramatic and bold that the musicians are dwarfed by the visual power of the image.

They are the creations of photo realist artist George Mead, who five years ago created Wet Paint Studios, which has moved this month from Berkeley to San Francisco.

Mead is an alumnus of the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. A master's degree in photo realist painting took him first to Hollywood to work in the film studios painting backdrops. He'd worked as an undergraduate painting murals in low-income housing projects under grants programs from the federal government.

"The message behind any project we did was to get involved with community groups and organize them to affect their environment in a positive way, but I found that in order to fulfill my needs as an artist, I couldn't continue to impose myself on people. Then, there was no more government subsidy. My images and whole orientation were changing," Mead said.

He'd played durms for 11 years but found he was splitting his energies too much between his art and his music, so gave up the latter.

On a round of galleries, when he was still doing private commisions, he was hired by the Del Monte Hyatt in Monterey to do a lounge mural of Moss Landing that is still there. His second was for a restaurant in Ohio called the Oregon Express. It featured a series of trains looking down the railroad tracks from different perspectives.

He was still in art school when he won a Bay Area art competition for an 11-story-building in Oakland and won. He didn't get much money but great exposure because it was a National Endowment of the Arts grant for the largest outdoor mural west of the Mississippi.

You can still see the huge acorn representing the positive growth of Oakland with the sprout rising up to a sunlit sky and the root winding down through the elements of the city.

A lasting image in San Francisco can still be seen at the side of the Valencia Gardens housing project at Guerrero and 15th Street in San Francisco, where he worked on outdoor murals and raised grant monies. He had children who lived the project trace their own shadows, then elaborated on them.

But it was when he dropped in on Bill Graham with his portfolio and got in on the ground floor of the impresario's scenic shops, FM Productions on Minnesota Street, that his career really leapt forward. Mead helped get the studio started with artist Dennis Larkins.

Working 75-hour weeks, they painted concert backdrops on scrim, canvas and muslin including painted floors for Las Vegas show. He recalls a Paul Anka set that had marble-like floors taken from a book, "The Versailles Palace."

After a year, Mead wanted to move on with the idea of matching his talent against the best artists in the country, those of the Hollywood scenic studios. Because of the transience of the artists in general, he became the youngest permanent union member at Paramount Pictures. He worked on many movies there and at Warner Brothers, but he seldom knew their plots, stars or titles. He simply followed instruction.

He does remember some "Fantasy Islands" and the movie "Altered States," but the important thing is that the work was challenging and he was in the company of master painters.

"It was very exciting. There was the hustle and bustle and the deadlines. We began at 6 a.m. and we all respected each other. It was a great situation, but I knew if I wanted to grow, I had to go out on my own. I really didn't like the lifestyle down there."

Back in the Bay Area, he picked up the Tower Records account right off the bat. He gets and average of four to five boards a week from them, taking a day and a half to complete each one from white board to finished product working with high-grade acrylics and walking on the floor applying layers and layers with brushes tied to bamboo poles.

An airbrush specialist, he paints on canvas, wood, glass, any size or shape. Some of the rock bands ask him to create billboards that will last outdoors up to four or five months. That's done with plastic paints although some of the colors are fugitive at a certain point.

Mead deals directly with the records companies: Arista, Motown, Warner Bros., Columbia, CBS, Capitol, A & M and RCA Records. Although his works are placed at various Tower Record locations, he hangs mainly at the Fisherman's Wharf site. All work is done in his studio and hung separately.

Other clients include the Concord Pavilion; Curran, Orpheum and Golden Gate theaters; Hyatt Hotel; Macy's California; Mexicana Airlines; San Francisco Symphony; San Franciso Forty Niners and Wilkes Bashford, to name only a few.

The band management officially owns the billboards. Mead has had to ship some as far away as to England to hang in the living rooms of mansions. He just sold one of Prince, the album cover with him on a motorcycle and fog swirling around him, to a man in Palo Alto for his condominium.

The album covers are already designed, Mead's speciality is to recreate them to 47 x 48 foot scale.