When Everything Goes to Hell in a Hand Basket
There is a certain point when I identify disaster looming ahead and try to prevent it. My husband refers to this as my “super power.” He explains that unlike many individuals, I anticipate all possible problems and immediately prepare a variety of solutions for every scenario. I attribute this to my theatre training and work with scenery restoration. Every project is filled with surprises, but in theatre we still need to make the final deadline – no exceptions.
The morning after the Fort Scott scenery was unloaded in Bloomington, Minnesota, another project popped up on the radar the next day, or I should say a red flag. This was the mural design and painting for the Minnesota Masonic Heritage Center lodge room. All of the hand painted murals that I had designed and presented during 2014-2015 had been cut by the CEO as they weren’t deemed “essential” for opening day. This was a way to cut overall costs for a complex that was financially spiraling out of control. Furthermore, the general director had suggested that we use digital print outs in lieu hand painting, believing that they would work just fine. I had plenty of tasks at hand so just let the subject go, understanding that the painting had been cut.
That morning the CEO invited Ty, Amanda, the general director and me out to breakfast to thank us for a job well done. I wanted the CEO to meet the owner of BellaTex, LLC, and his vice-president of operations as they had personally transported the scenery collection from Kansas to Minnesota. I believed that this company should hang all of the scenery. In particular, I wanted the lead on site to supervise a crew, as he was intimately familiar with each drop and the necessary hardware for scenic illusions. It would be ludicrous to hire anyone else at this point.
Training and explaining of this construction, mechanics, and standard hanging apparatus for this particular scenery collection would be incredibly time-consuming and expensive if we used anyone unfamiliar with historic scenery. Worse yet, an inexperienced crew could irreparably damage the scenery and the collection signifies a substantial investment of over $100,000 just to purchase and transport. I wanted the CEO to meet the owner of BellaTex face to face and to understand the amount of professionalism and knowledge that Ty brought to the table.
After breakfast, Ty, Amanda, and I headed over to the construction site so that they could meet the leads at A&P Construction – especially Pat Sims. Again, it was to put a face with a name since the BellaTex people were in town. We had just finished the basic introductions and were planning to leave when Pat said, “Wait a minute, Wendy. I want to talk to you about the hand-painted murals.”
He must have read the look of shock on my face, as he immediately looked uneasy. “What murals? They have all been cut. They were taken off the table quite a while ago.”
“Well,” he said, “they still have a budget line and are in all of the most recent paperwork.”
I nodded apologetically and said, “Well that is really too bad as there simply isn’t enough time now. A year ago, I explained to the CEO that it would take a full year with me focusing on this full-time. Maybe you mean the digital versions that the general director suggested and not hand-painted murals.”
“No,” he said, “They are still anticipating hand-painted murals on all of the walls in the lodge room.”
This is when there was an awkward silence in the room. Ty and Amanda were there to witness this whole exchange. I decided to extract myself from the conversation with,” Well, I’ll talk to the CEO right now as Ty and Amanda are leaving town.”
There was no way I could complete all of the murals for the lodge room and get anything restored for the opening. I immediately headed over to the CEO’s office to find out what was going on, as it had to be an error in communication.
It was unrealistic to expect one individual to paint all of the murals while leading the scenery restoration in a mere five months. Obviously, the CEO did not understand the amount of time that it took to either paint or restore, regardless of the labor estimates and timelines that I had previously submitted to him. The lodge room murals totaled about 2,250 square feet and all of it was to be trompe l’oeil painting – very high end and realistic painting. This did not even take into consideration the ceiling mural that I had declined to paint and was contacting Ann Gumpper to bid on. The design for King Solomon’s Temple in the east was also highly architectural and would take a ridiculous amount of time. Plus the mural painting, each restored drop took approximately 5 days with a full crew, once it was on site.
On top of this, I was still the curator for the opening museum exhibit and in charge of processing the 10,000-item St. Paul Scottish Rite library. I was still only hired for 30 hours each week and I simply could not see how all of this was going to happen – especially trying to complete any the restoration. However, it was apparent that the CEO did, in fact, expect me to produce all of the murals and complete the restoration of everything for the opening.
To be continued…
