Arts and Crafts

No Chance to be Forgotten

Posted at May 29, 2008 15:52

By Nancy Dailey

“GET A BUILDING!” That’s the advice Jim
Veronee gives young people.

“You can talk about art; you can show a
portfolio, but until other people see you working
… find a building, even if you have to
paint it at your own expense. It will propagate
more work. Stop painting on canvas right now
and get a building.”

Jim got his start around age twenty at movie
studios in California where he watched people
paint houses and backgrounds for movie sets.

“I can do that,” he thought. He was already
doing the same thing on smaller canvases.

He joined the Painters Union and joined the
people working on canvases so huge that the
artists had to walk the length of the canvas to
paint it. Once, busy painting mountain scenery,
he asked what production it was for, and someone
answered, Gunsmoke. That was a television
show set in Dodge City, Kansas, in the 1870s.

Gunsmoke? Kansas? Mountains?

“You can’t see mountains from Dodge City,”
Jim says. “None of them had ever been there;
they didn’t know. But the storyboard called for
mountains so we painted mountains. That’s
show biz,” he says with a quick laugh.

Jim’s biggest challenge was a sign, high up
on the Landers Theater at Springfield.

“I thought in the beginning I could just use
a big boom truck,” he says. “Well, it wouldn’t
fit in that alley with all those high tension
wires located right next to the building just
below the work site.” He found a company
from Kansas City that would put up a cable
with a small cage that ran up and down the
cable. But it wouldn’t fit between the building
and the wires, so he couldn’t go from the
bottom up.

“Well, I’m not a young man,” says this
energetic senior who admits to being seventy.
“I had to go up inside the theater, up a ladder—
the fire escape was kind of loose—then
climb over a five-foot retaining wall on to the
backside of the theater. Then I had to get into
a harness, lie down on the roof, and swing
out over a twelve-inch gutter hoping my feet
would hit the railings of the cage; and then get
into a position to paint.”

Jim has painted murals, both inside and out,
from California to South Carolina. A perk for
him is people who stop to visit while he’s painting.
His eyes twinkle as he tells one of his many
stories, especially if it involves word play.

“Murals increase the value of a building,”
Jim says, “and they give you the opportunity
to leave something behind. Otherwise people
forget you. When you’re forgotten, you’re dead.
Being dead’s worse than unemployment, you
know. Longer hours and less pay.”

Laughing, he gets back to painting. He’s finishing
Traders Printing Company; next comes
more bicycles for Queen City Cycles.
For more information, call 417-890-5196.

October 2007

Email this Article