The Making of My BOTart Painted Wine Barrel

Before we get too far away from the event -- and the experience -- I want to document the process of making my BOTart painted wine barrel for the WestEDGE Design Fair in Santa Monica, October 16th - 19th at the Barker Hangar.

The idea of creating a collection of contemporary artistic creations on wooden barrels was created by the 300-year-old Can Ribas Winery in 2008 in Mallorca, Spain, under the sponsorship of the Minister of Culture of Spain and the Presidency and Insular Council of the Balearic Islands. The current collection of 90 Barrels is the world’s first and largest Barrel Art Collection. It has been exhibited in well-known European wine regions including Munich and Berlin, Germany; Brussels, Belgium; Zurich, Switzerland; and Madrid and Mallorca, Spain. The exhibition made its transcontinental debut last year at Carmel Mission in the beautiful wine region of Carmel, California, with a specially commissioned, Blessed Stained Glass Barrel Artifact created by the famous Judson Studios and artist Andre Miripolsky in honor of the 300th anniversary of the birth of Father Junipero Serra. Father Serra was a Spanish Franciscan friar who founded a mission in Baja, CA, and the first nine of twenty-one Spanish missions in California, ranging from San Diego to San Francisco.

Fifteen artists were invited to join the collection and participate in the WestEDGE BOTART show, the first time a BOTART collection was ever displayed in the U.S.  I was delighted to be included!

My art studio at The Brewery has no air conditioning and the temperatures were still hovering around 100 degrees, so I opted to paint the barrel at home. Working at home also would be much more convenient than having to drive to and from the studio daily. The barrel was delivered on September 27th, right to our dining table. And it was huge! I had only two weeks to figure out a design, then get it painted and dry enough to be picked up for transport to the show in Santa Monica that was scheduled to open on the 16th of October.

The first job was to scrape and sand all of the dull, wax-like coating off the metal hoops. I hired help to do this job because it's very hard on the hands -- too hard for me. It took several hours, but the hoops looked nice and shiny. I covered them with tape to protect them, then painted the barrel black.

My plan was to make a much larger, slightly altered version of one of my Geometrix digital drawings. (You can see examples here on my website.) I liked the idea of overlaying angular shapes with black, straight-lined borders on top of the curvy barrel form. So I taped off sections and painted them bright colors, planning to remove the tape and leave crisp, black dividing lines. ~ There's no picture of this step because it looked awful! The colors were not opaque enough to cover the black, even with multiple coats. The sections seemed too large. The barrel felt massively heavy (well, it did weigh about 140 pounds, but I mean that the design itself felt heavy). I knew I'd have to change the base color to white to make anything work. That was going to be a major job and there was limited time to do it. I was in despair.

But, I had to rise to the occasion, so I changed the base color to white. It took four coats of primer, followed by two coats of white paint, with hours of drying time in between. I liked the idea of the black lines, so I left them taped. But the big breakthrough was that I found a song! Most of my artwork is inspired by music and for such a large project, I realized that I needed a specific song to make it possible for me to visualize how to approach it. Painting the barrel white made it seem much lighter. I also thought that, since it was a wine barrel, the design needed a light-hearted theme. That led me to New Orleans jazz, and that led me to the traditional song made famous by Professor Longhair: "Tipitina." It's just about impossible to make sense of the lyrics, but the last lines are: "We gonna hoola tralla walla malla dalla, Drink some mellow wine." Perfect, huh?

Now I had a clean, white barrel with black lines and silver hoops. I needed color, and plenty of it! I thought of confetti and Mardi Gras beads, and went to work.

It takes a long time to cover a barrel that's about three feet tall with a two foot diameter!

A very long time!

I had to tape off some of the black lines and clean up the edges. The black lines represent the streets that are filled with people on parade during Mardi Gras.

More confetti, more beads.

And still more! I wanted the slashes of color to feel like they're falling through the air, so they're kind of curvy and the paint application is streaky.

I decided that glitter paint would be perfect to enhance some of the larger dots/beads with a little texture and sparkle. The smaller dots and shapes add to the festive feeling of being right in the middle of the celebration.

The body of the barrel was done. Time to climb up and paint the top!

I knew that I wanted to use Mardi Gras beads . . .

. . .  so a shiny, metallic silver paint base seemed like the way to go. To my surprise, it took four coats of the very heavy paint, after two coats of primer!

The metal "Radoux" label was already part of the barrel. I looked it up and found that Tonnellerie Radoux is one of the world's leading wine barrel cooperages, manufacturing high-quality French, American and Eastern European Oak barrels. So I featured the label by wrapping it in some beads.

Then I added more to cover the top. Super Glue held them in place!

I think they look great!

I signed my initials using glitter paint!

The very tired artist, right after completing work around midnight on the 14th. Pick-up was scheduled for the following day.

Here's the promo photo of me that was used for the BOTart event.

At last, the big opening night!

The main display area for BOTART prominently featured the stained glass barrel designed by my friend, Andre Miripolsky, and fabricated by Judson Studios in Pasadena.

And right in the center of the main wall: Tipitina! Each of the artists was asked to provide a painting to display along with their barrel, so above it is my painting entitled, "Hot Fun in the Summertime." Zillions of little dots, a cheerful song as inspiration! It fit in with the spirit of the barrel perfectly.

What an adventure! You can see many more photos of the BOTART at WestEDGE show on my Art by Cynthia Facebook Page, including a closer look at barrels by the other artists. Thank you and thanks for following my work!