This article was in yesterday's journal and it's about my dad. :)
When does he decorate? Let us count the days By SHEILA B. LALWANI
Jimmy Moberg puts his heart into his work and onto windows at El Greco restaurant in Milwaukee last week.
Moberg was a young painter then who was struggling to find meaningful work that also would support his wife and two daughters.
Nearly 20 years after Moberg's brush glided across glass, the landscape of his personal life has changed. But his passion for painting holiday images on windows in the Milwaukee area remains as steady as the meditative stance he takes when turning a clear window into a valentine complete with hearts and snowflakes.
"He does amazing things," says Gus Gliatis, a longtime client and owner of El Greco in Milwaukee. "(Painters) like him are born and never born again."
By using windows at restaurants, car dealerships or small businesses as his canvas, Moberg, 53, has created a career of turning glass panes into holiday art beginning each year with Valentine's Day and ending with Christmas.
There aren't many artists like Moberg around anymore. With advances in technology and graphic arts, the demand for hand-made window decoration has waned. While Moberg handles as many as 70 restaurants and businesses on Valentine's Day, he has no successor or assistant. And with each year that passes, he moves a little slower, paints feel a little heavier and the weather seems a little frostier.
"There is very little demand for hand-done art," says Larry Stultz, chair of Graphics Design Department at the Art Institute of Atlanta. "This guy is a Puritan."
Moberg, a bearded man with a crusty painter's cap, long navy blue corduroy overalls and paint-stained fingers, thinks about his life spent in art in less artistic terms.
"I don't know what I would do if I retired," he says.
Moberg says he became inspired to launch a one-man company in the 1980s after watching "Holiday Inn," the movie about a place open only on holidays. Until then, Moberg remembers working odd jobs at auto body shops around town, dabbling in graphics art and contract paint jobs a few times.He says the idea of starting his business, being his own boss and setting his hours appealed to him.
Luck smiled on him one St. Patrick's Day when he landed his first job as a holiday painter for a local restaurant. From that job, he got a referral to another. Then, another, and another and another. No business card. No Web site. But the phone was starting to ring.
"The work always came," Moberg says. "It just sort of landed in my life."
Over time, Moberg says, he collected enough clients to paint full-time. In Moberg's family, he says, nobody painted or had artistic inclinations. He graduated from Custer High School in 1970 without having taken one painting class.
When he thinks about why he likes painting, he's at a loss. He likes watching paint roll off the brush, he says after thinking a bit.His schedule can be tight. During the weeks before holidays, he sometimes works through the night. Other times, he may work until 3 a.m. Restaurants get most of his work, and he begins painting weeks in advance. During the Christmas season, for example, he begins painting Nov. 1.
"I work like a dog for two weeks, and then I take a few weeks off," Moberg says.
Valentine's Day is the first major holiday of the year for Moberg. The decorations are relatively simple - hearts, snowflakes, but no images of Cupid. He thinks Cupid is hokey.
He lugs paint out of his West Allis home and journeys to as many as 70 restaurants from Sheboygan to Milwaukee to Oconomowoc to Racine. Moberg paints for Greek restaurants, 24-hour American grills and burger joints. His clients know him by his first name.
"More coffee, Jim?" El Greco waitress Denise Koceja asks one morning. Moberg pushes his coffee cup forward.
"We've been watching him paint for years," Koceja says.
Unlike many other artists, Moberg paints from his head. No sketches. No drawings.
He uses sign enamel paint, which doesn't wear off easily and is often used by businesses for promotional lettering. An average job takes him a couple of hours.
He charges from $60 to $600 per job. He doesn't want to hire additional staff.
"He's very good at what he does," says Jim Katravas, owner of Sunset Family Restaurant in Waukesha.
Determining the number of artists like Moberg can be hard. Many painters work on contract and aren't unionized. Figures from the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, based in Washington, D.C., show that 140,000 painters belong to the union. Most of the members are commercial painters. Only a handful are specialty painters, and even fewer make a living from holiday work.
In Wisconsin, storefront holiday painters number in the single digits, says Art Cadilli of Racine, another window painter. Cadilli and Moberg collaborate on different projects around Milwaukee and share trade secrets like brush strokes, technique and color.
"There are very few people doing this type of art on a larger scale," Cadilli says.
Changes in technology are a major reason for shifts in the industry. Highway billboard signs were done by hand, says Stultz at the Art Institute of Atlanta. Now, graphic art like Moberg's has become computerized.
Jim Felgate, a professor of graphic design at The Art Institutes International Minnesota in Minneapolis, says even with advancements in technology, creativity rests on the artist.
"You still need people that can do the thinking," Felgate says.
As for Moberg, he finished his last window for Valentine's Day about a week ago. He plans to spend his Valentine's Day at home with his girlfriend. He got divorced years ago, and his children are grown.
After that he'll begin gearing up for St. Patrick's Day, for which he'll be painting dozens of windows alone again.
"The older I get, the harder it gets," he says.
From the Feb. 14, 2006 editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Jimmy Moberg puts his heart into his work and onto windows at El Greco restaurant in Milwaukee last week.
Moberg was a young painter then who was struggling to find meaningful work that also would support his wife and two daughters.
Nearly 20 years after Moberg's brush glided across glass, the landscape of his personal life has changed. But his passion for painting holiday images on windows in the Milwaukee area remains as steady as the meditative stance he takes when turning a clear window into a valentine complete with hearts and snowflakes.
"He does amazing things," says Gus Gliatis, a longtime client and owner of El Greco in Milwaukee. "(Painters) like him are born and never born again."
By using windows at restaurants, car dealerships or small businesses as his canvas, Moberg, 53, has created a career of turning glass panes into holiday art beginning each year with Valentine's Day and ending with Christmas.
There aren't many artists like Moberg around anymore. With advances in technology and graphic arts, the demand for hand-made window decoration has waned. While Moberg handles as many as 70 restaurants and businesses on Valentine's Day, he has no successor or assistant. And with each year that passes, he moves a little slower, paints feel a little heavier and the weather seems a little frostier.
"There is very little demand for hand-done art," says Larry Stultz, chair of Graphics Design Department at the Art Institute of Atlanta. "This guy is a Puritan."
Moberg, a bearded man with a crusty painter's cap, long navy blue corduroy overalls and paint-stained fingers, thinks about his life spent in art in less artistic terms.
"I don't know what I would do if I retired," he says.
Moberg says he became inspired to launch a one-man company in the 1980s after watching "Holiday Inn," the movie about a place open only on holidays. Until then, Moberg remembers working odd jobs at auto body shops around town, dabbling in graphics art and contract paint jobs a few times.He says the idea of starting his business, being his own boss and setting his hours appealed to him.
Luck smiled on him one St. Patrick's Day when he landed his first job as a holiday painter for a local restaurant. From that job, he got a referral to another. Then, another, and another and another. No business card. No Web site. But the phone was starting to ring.
"The work always came," Moberg says. "It just sort of landed in my life."
Over time, Moberg says, he collected enough clients to paint full-time. In Moberg's family, he says, nobody painted or had artistic inclinations. He graduated from Custer High School in 1970 without having taken one painting class.
When he thinks about why he likes painting, he's at a loss. He likes watching paint roll off the brush, he says after thinking a bit.His schedule can be tight. During the weeks before holidays, he sometimes works through the night. Other times, he may work until 3 a.m. Restaurants get most of his work, and he begins painting weeks in advance. During the Christmas season, for example, he begins painting Nov. 1.
"I work like a dog for two weeks, and then I take a few weeks off," Moberg says.
Valentine's Day is the first major holiday of the year for Moberg. The decorations are relatively simple - hearts, snowflakes, but no images of Cupid. He thinks Cupid is hokey.
He lugs paint out of his West Allis home and journeys to as many as 70 restaurants from Sheboygan to Milwaukee to Oconomowoc to Racine. Moberg paints for Greek restaurants, 24-hour American grills and burger joints. His clients know him by his first name.
"More coffee, Jim?" El Greco waitress Denise Koceja asks one morning. Moberg pushes his coffee cup forward.
"We've been watching him paint for years," Koceja says.
Unlike many other artists, Moberg paints from his head. No sketches. No drawings.
He uses sign enamel paint, which doesn't wear off easily and is often used by businesses for promotional lettering. An average job takes him a couple of hours.
He charges from $60 to $600 per job. He doesn't want to hire additional staff.
"He's very good at what he does," says Jim Katravas, owner of Sunset Family Restaurant in Waukesha.
Determining the number of artists like Moberg can be hard. Many painters work on contract and aren't unionized. Figures from the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, based in Washington, D.C., show that 140,000 painters belong to the union. Most of the members are commercial painters. Only a handful are specialty painters, and even fewer make a living from holiday work.
In Wisconsin, storefront holiday painters number in the single digits, says Art Cadilli of Racine, another window painter. Cadilli and Moberg collaborate on different projects around Milwaukee and share trade secrets like brush strokes, technique and color.
"There are very few people doing this type of art on a larger scale," Cadilli says.
Changes in technology are a major reason for shifts in the industry. Highway billboard signs were done by hand, says Stultz at the Art Institute of Atlanta. Now, graphic art like Moberg's has become computerized.
Jim Felgate, a professor of graphic design at The Art Institutes International Minnesota in Minneapolis, says even with advancements in technology, creativity rests on the artist.
"You still need people that can do the thinking," Felgate says.
As for Moberg, he finished his last window for Valentine's Day about a week ago. He plans to spend his Valentine's Day at home with his girlfriend. He got divorced years ago, and his children are grown.
After that he'll begin gearing up for St. Patrick's Day, for which he'll be painting dozens of windows alone again.
"The older I get, the harder it gets," he says.
From the Feb. 14, 2006 editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel