Dj Caves In:
The Barne's Mural

Petaluma, CA 2005

“We want the wine closet off our new kitchen addition to look like the inside of a wine cave. Can you do that?” Ben Barnes asked me. “Of course I can,” I replied. Then turned to my new Marketing Director (Ben’s daughter) Emily Eveland and asked: “What’s the inside of a wine cave look like?”

Several days later, Emily—who previously worked in the California Wine industry—took me to The Moon Mountain Winery in Sonoma where we meet Liz Lease. She gave us a tour of their extensive caves and allowed me to take reference pictures. I was mesmerized by the scale of the caves, each cut into the mountain bedrock by massive boring machines that left jagged teeth marks on the curved walls. The walls themselves, mostly in shadow, lit only by a series of lights hanging from conduit pipes at the apex of the ceiling, were a mess of earth tones from the dark end of the spectrum; glistening here and there from the water that seeps into the cave and trickles down the walls. Most everything was covered with a deeply greened and rusty yellowed moss. In great stacks on massive wooden pallets were rows and rows of oak wine barrels. Each wall was lined with these large barrels, and the center of each cave was stacked with barrels two deep and three barrels high. In the intersections of the cave’s fingers were more barrels, some resting on pallets others standing upright. Everywhere one looked were stacks, stands, and gangs of oak wine barrels.
Criminy, I said to myself in a panic, how am I ever going to pull off this painting! Later that evening, with reference material by my side and an outline on a sheet of watercolor paper of the four foot by five foot closet I was supposed to turn into a seemingly endless wine cave, I started a drawing. Then I did another one, and another, and another, and. . . Finally I gave up and went outside to my porch swing with martini and cigar in hand and decided to let the pixies figure it out. Amazing creatures the pixies are, when I got back to the drawing board they had several outlines sketched on to the paper for me to paint. Several days later I took the sketches to the clients, Ben and Sue Barnes, and let them decide which of the two sketches I would actually paint on their wall.

They picked the one with the most difficult perspective and the challenge was on. With pencil, straightedge, level, and mathematical equations of cylinders in perspective as my tools I set to work. The first challenge: eliminating the far corner from the room. It was easy for the pixies because they were working on a flat surface. But I had to deal with two walls coming together at a ninety degree angle. So I plotted and planned and worked up the math and eventually drew a full sized sketch on sheets of butcher paper I had tacked on the walls. When I was finished I stood back and realized that the sketch looked absolutely nothing like the inside of a wine cave. I tried again with the same result. I double checked my perspective, I reworked the math, I tested my level for accuracy. After a long debate with myself over lunch as I pondered whether or not I should give up and apologize for having wasted their time, I returned to the closet. I analyzed the challenge: turn a four foot by five foot closet into a seemingly endless wine cave. I stared at the problem: the corner. I ripped up the existing butcher block paper on the wall and hung new sheets. I crumbled up the mathematical equations, set my level and straight edge out of the room and started playing with curves. In a feverish flurry I scumbled pastel on my sketch than stood back and had a look. The corner was gone. In its place were stacks of wine barrels. The first challenge was met, which presented the bigger one—how to transfer the sketch to the wall and achieve the same illusion with paint. Several days later, under the watchful eye of Pup (Grandmother Barnes) the project was coming long wonderfully. In the original sketch two barrels were to be standing upright just on the inside of the doorway, but in consultation with Ben, Sue, and Emily it was decided that instead of painting in the standing barrel it would add an even greater sense of reality if a real barrel was used there. Emily found one and brought it to the site where Mike D’Elicio, the master craftsmen who created the new kitchen addition, cut it in half lengthwise and pinioned it so it would hold together. Once the painting was finished, we placed the half barrel in its new home and stood back and had a look. Wonderful. The barrel and the wine bottles and wine glasses set on top of it made the illusion complete. And because the barrel was a well used one, there was even the smell of fermenting wine in the room.

Now came the final challenge, would the clients like what they saw? I closed the door to the Wine Cave and let Ben and Sue open it as I waited in the kitchen to hear their reaction. I feared the polite silence of disapproval or a sigh of disappointment. I heard the door squeak open, I held my breath, then heard: “Oh, wow!”

The next day I went back to clean up my materials, and while there I painting in the mascot over the door. Grandmother Barnes, who had been my collaborator through the project, knew he was there but she was bound to silence. It was my intension that in a week or two Ben and Sue would get an added surprise when they went into the cave to place their wine bottles. But the next morning I receive the following email: