Mountain Views News          Saturday, February 4, 2012

16

HOMES AND PROPERTY

 Mountain Views News Saturday, February 4, 2012 

One Of A Kind: Featuring unique homes and gardens and the people who create them. Story by Chris Bertrand.Photos by Chris Bertrand and Ike Bahadourian


ENVISIONING THE BIG PICTURE

Muralist George Rhode; Illustrating Ceilings, Walls… Down to the Switch Plates


Quiet, understated 
and assured, artist/
muralist George Rhode 
lets his experience with 
the paintbrush do most 
of the talking about his 
grand scale mural work. 
Rhode has etched his 
mark on hundreds of venues, both large and small. 

His work can be found as the intricate ceiling 
mural at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, a 60’s 
style diner wall at Harrah’s, a 27,000 square foot 
Hidden Valley estate, Jacaranda trees at the Four 
Seasons, a mural project for Dave Murdoch of Dell 
Corporation or a mood setting landscape scene at 
the new wine tasting room at The Bottle Shop in 
Sierra Madre. 

Rhode began on the business side of art, as a 
graphic designer and worked in the corporate 
world on accounts like Taco Bell before venturing 
into the “finer” arts of mural and interior artisan 
wall projects.

Sometimes, you’ll find Rhode knee deep in the 
many step process of applying the artisan texture 
and mottled rich colors of Venetian plaster. 
Armed with a trowel, Rhode applies thin layers 
of a special plaster embedded with ground up 
marble. Then the walls are burnished to a rich 
sheen. Finally, some areas are sanded to mottle the 
color, texture and sheen. All this takes the careful 
artist’s eye. 

Rhode noted that new Venetian plaster-like 
products are coming out with “faux” ingredients 
instead of marble, but says he is sticking to the 
natural, original formulation, for its superior end 
results. 

Other times, he journeys to the Westside outlets 
that sell the large scale canvas for movie sets. 
These he uses to prepare applications that will be 
painted here in Los Angeles, dried, rolled and then 
shipped to a location elsewhere in the country, 
like the Harrah’s Casino project, the Aces Diner.

In order to create the mood for the 60’s diner 
motif, Rhode created a graphic photo mural 
printed on canvas for a whole wall of memorabilia 
of the era. He recreated Marilyn Monroe from 
the famous photograph of Monroe with Joe di 
Maggio… minus Joe. “I liked her pose in that 
photo,” he reflected. Adjacent to Marilyn is a 
slicked up Elvis and of course, a those old plastic 
discs called records. Puts one in the mood for a 
milk shake, fries and perhaps a poodle skirt.

Rhode seems to be drawn to food subjects. If 
you’re grabbing a bite to eat while gambling at 
the Riverside Casino, look for his larger than life 
renditions of fruits and vegetables climbing the 
walls of the buffet.

In every application, Rhode concerns himself 
with all the smallest details. He still shudders at 
his inability to “paint in” the fire sprinklers in the 
middle of a beautiful cloud ceiling application at a 
Las Vegas hotel. When it comes to switch plates in 
inopportune locations, Rhode simply paints right 
over them, incorporating the functionality into 
the mural art seamlessly.

For textural art statements, Rhode has been 
known to slit open bags of sand onto a studio floor, 
rake them in the artistic Japanese garden style, 
photograph the rippled sand, then manipulate the 
pictures in PhotoShop to the desired result. 

Rhode’s just completed, Sierra Madre project 
shows his deep love and respect for the color 
palette and style of Diego Rivera. The scene 
merges two scenes; one a Tuscan vineyard scene 
in the foreground, appropriate for the wine tasting 
venue. At the owner’s request, the background is 
the panorama of the San Gabriel Mountains, as 
viewed from Sierra Madre Boulevard, including 
Jones Peak.

In the home setting, Rhode often uses the 
trompe l’oeil technique, which creates a three 
dimensional impression using line and shadow. 
Derived from the French, “to deceive the eye,” 
the method is often used to create the illusion of a 
larger room, or to take place of expensive, or space 
consuming elements like ornate pillars. 

In some cases, he uses medium density 
fiberboard (MDF) doors and moldings as a base for 
realistic looking wood grain painting, delivering 
the expensive look at a more economical price 
point.

Rhode employed trompe l’oeil, Venetian plaster 
and mural work in a Claremont home recently. 
His work there was extensively featured in a home 
design article in the October, 2011 edition of 
Inland Empire magazine.

In another residential project, he incorporated 
a stylized portraiture in an Anaheim Hills home, 
where he painted life-size rendition of the owner’s 
three sons, dressed in traditional Armenian folk 
attire and playing indigenous instruments.

Rhode was honored to be chosen to create two 
of the six lighthearted renditions of Botticelli’s 
iconic “Birth of Venus” paintings, commissioned 
by Caesar’s Palace. His versions offer a bit of 
humor with raining miniature Venuses in 
one, reminiscent of the tiny umbrellas in Rene 
Magritte’s famous work. In Rhode’s second 
work of this series, he pokes a bit of fun at Roy 
Lichtenstein’s pop art, with a cartoon-like Venus.

George Rhode seems to have the big picture, 
bringing art to the home, the hotel, the wine 
tasting venue, and even the switch plate, without 
losing sight of the small details.

George Rhode, a Sierra Madre resident, can be 
contacted at 626-975-9367 or GeoRhode@aol.com. 


IF THEY SHOULD ASK

When you tell friends and family you’re going to buy or sell a home, and they ask, “Why are you 
working through a real estate agent when you can just use the internet,” how will you respond? Your 
first answer should be to have a professional handle all the paperwork - disclosure forms, inspection 
reports, deeds and titles, settlement statements... they’ll get the picture.

 

You could describe your representative’s knowledge about the area - schools, zoning, and property 
values. You want to know that the neighborhood matches your needs, and that your home holds 
resale value for the future.

 

Tell them there’s more to advertising than websites, and that your agent will more likely find a buyer 
instead through their relationships with other agents and past and current clients. Not to mention the 
fact that you don’t want complete strangers visiting your home, and you’re more comfortable knowing 
that your representative has screened and qualified all potential buyers.

 

And once you’re on either side of an offer, you trust a professional’s ability to negotiate successfully when 
it comes to terms like price, financing, inspections and repairs, and other contractual commitments.

 

Your final argument might be that most people may buy or sell a handful of homes in their lifetime, 
but your agent has been successful hundreds of times, on both sides of the transaction. Case closed!

LOVELY SIERRA MADRE LOCATION,

READY TO MOVE IN, PRIVATE CORNER LOT

304 Sunnyside Ave., Sierra Madre | Offered at $739,000


Beautiful, bright, open floor plan. Located in lovely Sierra 
Madre. This is a large corner lot; the home is 3 good sized 
bedrooms, 2 baths. The kitchen is open to dining room. 
There is an indoor laundry room located off the kitchen. The 
home has just been painted inside and out, pretty hardwood 
floors, the roof was put on in May 1999. All the windows 
have gorgeous wood shutters-. This home is ready for 
you and yours! Showing is easy, just call me!!! No need to 
preview, great condition!

Features: 1,590 sqft | 9,647 Lot Size | 3 BR | 2 BA


CAROL 

CANTERBURY

Prudential 

California Realty

626-252-6322 Cell

CarolCanterbury@
hotmail.com