Pierre Shakes
Registered
I posted the virtual tour seen on PeacockBilliards.com of my colourful poolhall last January and it has had two thousand hits from you guys and twenty comments. Thank you. Comments were mostly about the gallery of table styles and the price to play.
But nobody mentioned the seven original or enlarged-reproduction murals from 45 to 600 sqft that adorn the walls of the poolhall. They were commissioned from Canada’s best known muralist, Frank Lewis, and Anne Ehrlich who was 17,18, 22, 24, and 25 when she painted her five murals.
Did no-one notice James Joyce's text, Celtic knotts, and figures based on Rembrandt painted on the baltic birch tables, bars, wall panels and doors of the James Joyce Bistro by my good friend local artist and Finnegas Wake fanatic Robert Amos? (I’m fanatic about Ulysses and will soon have an essay published in the James Joyce Quarterly.)
I attribute the success of the business at least as much to the aesthetic/cultural factors surrounding players as they wait their turn, as to the variety of fancy furniture or technical tables - 21of 9’s and 4 of 7’s - with their 17 cheerful colours of cloth. It also doesn’t hurt that we are at the very center of town and are well-known to generations of Victorians after 43 years.
Most poolhalls have a Sargent-Major-aesthetic: rows of identical tables, in straight lines, uniformy spaced with the same cloth. And on the walls? Who cares, probably some posters of players.
Although I paid very professional fees to both Frank and Robert, young Anne was a bargain. She worked hourly at a higher rate than if she was clerking or waiting tables, but so very happy to get paid to paint. She is now an architect. Talk to art teachers at local high schools: they can recommend talented students who are mature enough to follow through on a large project. An easy way to get a strong effort: demand they give you ART. Nobody knows what ‘art' is, but they will give you their best effort if you ask for it.
The local youth input will be useful for your publicity. The painters’ friends, family and schoolmates will come. Newspapers will run articles and local TV is always dying to have colourful footage.
It took sixteen years to get those seven murals done (and one more of 1,000 sqft painted on the back of a building, which we couldn’t take with us when we moved downtown). So the outlay for them never did mangle the year’s budget.
Open the images to see the detail.
But nobody mentioned the seven original or enlarged-reproduction murals from 45 to 600 sqft that adorn the walls of the poolhall. They were commissioned from Canada’s best known muralist, Frank Lewis, and Anne Ehrlich who was 17,18, 22, 24, and 25 when she painted her five murals.
Did no-one notice James Joyce's text, Celtic knotts, and figures based on Rembrandt painted on the baltic birch tables, bars, wall panels and doors of the James Joyce Bistro by my good friend local artist and Finnegas Wake fanatic Robert Amos? (I’m fanatic about Ulysses and will soon have an essay published in the James Joyce Quarterly.)
I attribute the success of the business at least as much to the aesthetic/cultural factors surrounding players as they wait their turn, as to the variety of fancy furniture or technical tables - 21of 9’s and 4 of 7’s - with their 17 cheerful colours of cloth. It also doesn’t hurt that we are at the very center of town and are well-known to generations of Victorians after 43 years.
Most poolhalls have a Sargent-Major-aesthetic: rows of identical tables, in straight lines, uniformy spaced with the same cloth. And on the walls? Who cares, probably some posters of players.
Although I paid very professional fees to both Frank and Robert, young Anne was a bargain. She worked hourly at a higher rate than if she was clerking or waiting tables, but so very happy to get paid to paint. She is now an architect. Talk to art teachers at local high schools: they can recommend talented students who are mature enough to follow through on a large project. An easy way to get a strong effort: demand they give you ART. Nobody knows what ‘art' is, but they will give you their best effort if you ask for it.
The local youth input will be useful for your publicity. The painters’ friends, family and schoolmates will come. Newspapers will run articles and local TV is always dying to have colourful footage.
It took sixteen years to get those seven murals done (and one more of 1,000 sqft painted on the back of a building, which we couldn’t take with us when we moved downtown). So the outlay for them never did mangle the year’s budget.
Open the images to see the detail.
