by Heidi Simmons
Vintage cars are parked in open garages, Dracula spreads his cape and King Kong climbs the building to get a glimpse of San Jacinto, while a camera crew sets up the next shot and the starlet heads to the dressing room. From the street you can see a colorful variety of characters and the busy film crew at work.
This is the Palm Springs Film Factory. And the 1930’s cast and crew are so life-like you may have the urge to run up and get an autograph between takes. But these full-blown characters are only two-dimensional. They are the work of artist Keith Blum.
“I like to tell a story,” said Blum. “Each character has to be doing something and they all have a part in the bigger picture.” Blum points to his painted characters that surround the Film Factory building. He identifies the director, producer, cameraman and actors. “The owner loves the look of the 1930s so we used those characters and cars.”
The Palm Springs Film Factory is a 7500 square foot television and film production facility with studio space, large green screen, editing bays and a mobile production unit. The owner is Gloria Manelis. Her daughter, attorney Marie Manelis, runs the studio. Concerned about copyright infringement, Manelis had Blum change the faces of the popular 30s characters like Tarzan and Scarlet O’Hara. If you look closely at Faye Rey, she has Gloria’s face!
So here, on the corner of Manufacturing and Plantation in the Thousand Palms’ industrial complex, surrounded by boxy buildings on wide streets, among party planners and plumbers, Blum’s mural distinguishes the Film Factory with amazing color, shadow and perspective.
A technique called trompe l’oeil – French for “deceive the eye,” Blum creates realistic imagery with optical illusion and forced perspective. “Trompe l’oeil is a mixture of everything,” said Blum. “It’s perspective, shadows, shape and color. It’s making things life-size so it feels real.”
Using water based latex and acrylic paint, Blum says it’s more practical for murals. “It dries much quicker, it is easy to correct and it’s cheaper than oils,” said Blum. “Oil outside in sunlight will yellow and discolor in time.”
For this project Blum is using 40 to 50 colors. His pallet, thick with colorful paint, is perched neatly on a two-tiered, compact gray cart with wheels. The cart is full of paint tubes, brushes and gallon containers of plain white and flat black for blending and priming. It is an exciting array of organized creativity.
Blum first draws with chalk, then uses white primer as a base. Appling colors like red ochre, burnt umber, emerald green, ultramarine blue, dioxazine purple to name a few, bring the Munchkins from The Wizard of Oz to life on the otherwise plain wall.
For more than 25 years, Blum has been painting murals. Born and raised in Southern California, he has lived in the CV for eight years. He first knew he could draw when he was just seven years old. While at the hospital to get his tonsils removed, a nurse gave him paper and a crayon, pointed to a toy racecar and told him to draw it. She was so amazed at his ability, she bragged to his folks. From then on he knew he was an artist.
But he never pursued art seriously. His parents said art could only be considered a hobby. Then when he was 29, Blum discovered his gift again when he painted the tiny kitchen of his first home. “I knew I could do it,” said Blum. “I had a black and white tile floor and I continued it into the wall. I just saw it. It looked great!” At the time Blum hadn’t even heard of trompe l’oeil.
From the walls of his own home, he did friend’s and relative’s walls and garages. Blum shortly realized he could do it for a living. “I painted a ceiling and got a check for $200,” said Blum. “On the memo line it said, ‘for mural painting.’ I carried that check for three weeks.” He has been painting ever since; doing work in mostly the homes of the affluent as far away as Minnesota.
“When you find your passion there is nothing in the world more satisfying than doing it,” Blum said. “The curse is that’s all you want to do. I get so absorbed in it I forget to do anything else.”
Besides murals, Blum does portraits in charcoal or pencil. He does mosaics and works with clay. He writes poetry and short stories. He is in the process of putting together a video to teach trompe l’oeil in three easy steps. Blum loves to share his work and painting public murals is a great way to do it. His web site is www.keithblum.com
