For the past three months, amid the clanging of stone masons and the rip-sawing of carpenters, two painters have quietly transformed drywall into art. One, Paul Manktelow of Reno, Nev., is an Englishman whose portfolio includes compact disc covers and greeting cards. The other, Bob Frankowiak of Milwaukee, is a museum muralist whose canvasses are as big as life, and longer lasting.
The two have passed the winter, mid-morning to late evening, brush stroke by brush stroke, in the assemblage of elephantine panoramas. Zebras and Canada geese, vultures and white-tailed deer - each has sprung from their paint-spattered palettes.
Soon the muralists' work will become the province of patrons, as all art must. Who will see it first? Other painters? Art students? Critics?
Try shoppers.
Manktelow and Frankowiak have labored these many months in the fine art of painting, aimed at furthering the high art of retailing.
Frankowiak's mural of a bull moose and beaver ponds, loons and bulrushes recalls pristine northern waters and statuesque river bluffs. Meanwhile, Manktelow's murals - one 96 feet by 20 feet - provide the backdrop for two African plains dioramas first envisioned by Dick Cabela, who with his brother Jim owns Cabela's, which brands itself as the 'world's foremost outfitter of fishing, hunting and outdoor gear.'
Headquartered in Sidney, Neb., Cabela's on April 1 will open a 150,000-square-foot retail flagship along Interstate Hwy. 35W just north of Owatonna.
The new store seems intended to entertain and inspire as much as to sell - or perhaps the former facilitates the latter.
How else to explain the sequestering of Manktelow and Frankowiak in Owatonna for these many weeks?
Artists in residence, indeed.
'I have a wife and three kids in Reno, so I don't like to be gone this long,' Manktelow said. 'I've done murals of this kind, though not many this big, around the world. Usually I'll paint them on canvasses in a warehouse in Reno, and travel to the site only while the paper hangers are assembling the painting.'
Manktelow, 51, said he wanted to paint the Cabela's murals on site because they are curved on the ends and overhead, thus 'enveloping' the viewer. 'When you do a mural like this that's curved, it's not practical to do it on canvas,' Manktelow said.
Frankowiak, 65, retired art director of the Milwaukee Public Museum, brought his wife with him to Owatonna. His mural is 96 feet long by as much as 40 feet tall. During the brief periods that he wasn't painting, eating or sleeping in Owatonna, the two gathered in their motel room to consider the mural's progress, maybe catch a little TV.
'I've been painting since I was a kid,' he said. 'My dad was a painter and I watched him for some years. Then, when I was seven or eight, he gave me a few brushes.'
When Frankowiak joined the Milwaukee Public Museum in 1955, expansion was in progress. One wing was added, then another and another, each requiring a muralist's touch. 'In 1972, I did a 120-foot painting that was part of an African diorama,' he said.
Manktelow took a different route to Owatonna. A former sign painter and book illustrator, he considers himself part artist, part businessman. He has flown home to Reno only once in three months. 'Art is something I've always been fascinated by,' he said. 'I've struggled with it. But I've stayed with it because I love it.'
Manktelow and Frankowiak are charged not only with making big murals, but helping to create multidimensional artworks. To complete the African dioramas, scores of mounted wild animals will be placed in front of the murals. Grass and other flora also will be added. Viewed together - animals and their habitat in front, the painting behind - all must be complementary, and in scale.
The two dioramas were designed by Animal Artistry in Reno, owned by Michael Boyce, a onetime minister turned taxidermist. On the project, Manktelow and Frankowiak work for Animal Artistry.
'The trick to paintings of this scale is that you have to step back continually to visualize the entire work. Then you have to climb back on the scaffold and execute what you envisioned,' Manktelow said.
'Then you get back down again, step back and look to see how well you did.'
Dioramas at a glance - Dioramas are works of art that can include mounted animals or even sculptures in the foreground. Behind is a mural that complements the foreground figures. - The intent of dioramas is to create a three-dimensional effect that 'places' the viewer in the scene. - Both dioramas in the new Cabela's store, which opens April 1, are African plains scenes. One features a 13-ton elephant. Additionally, there are three cape buffalo under a tree, two rhinos fighting, a leopard leaping out of a tree over a water hole where baboons are drinking, vultures perching in a tree waiting for the hyenas to finish their meal, and a zebra and her foal in flight from a pride of lions. This diorama covers 1,200 square feet. - The second African diorama shows 39 different African plains game animals in a pastoral scene. Included are African antelope, lions, a leopard, wart hogs, pythons and various birds. Square-footage: 900. - The dioramas were designed by Animal Artistry of Reno, Nev.
