Glen C. Davies
"Museum of Mystery"
May 18-27, 2007
In the summer of 1973 I ran off and joined the circus…actually my parents dropped me off. My first venture into show painting featured mural sized plywood panels festooned with images of “Giant Jungle Rats” chewing off the leg of some helpless victim. With experience gleaned from a stint at a Champaign, Illinois billboard company, I expanded my art school painting skills into an “on the road” business. Over the past thirty years I have worked for numerous outdoor entertainment venues, designing and painting fun houses, dark rides, show fronts and sideshow banners. Clients include Carson and Barnes Circus, Hoxie Brothers Circus, Link Carnival and Canada’s Conklin Shows. After meeting several banner painters and admiring their unique livelihood, I began producing banners for escape artist Andy Dallas. Throughout the 1980s I painted a series of banners promoting his escapes and illusions—including such titles as The Spirit Chamber, Aqua Body Bag Escape, Triple Death Trap, and Water Torture Escape. Later in 1993 I was contacted by Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History to design and paint eight 10 X 5 ft. show banners fro their new exhibit “Life Over Time.” Painted in traditional banner style, these paintings were themed to reflect the nature of scientific mysteries and origins of the modern museum. The banner work that I produce today is limited to a clientele which includes a handful of outdoor showmen, magicians, collectors and curiosity seekers. Requests include the usual array of sideshow subjects (ie Human Pincushion, Blockhead, and Spider Woman ). New and unusual subjects offer a welcome chance to append my visual dictionary. These recent commissions include Real Shrunken Heads from Ecuador and Atomic Chickens from Chernobyl. Public venues requesting less “colorful” banner subjects include children’s museums, park district facilities and shopping malls. [Banners are painted to order on canvas blanks which are hemmed and cornered with reinforced material and metal D-rings or grommets. Sizes vary and can be 3 X 4 ft. or smaller and 8 X 10 ft. or larger.] |
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