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Las Vegas Life magazine - November 1998
Title: A Brush with Greatness
By Phil Hagen, Las Vegas Life magazine
A Brush
with Greatness: Tom Bisesti raises mural standards
through the ceiling
You might say Tom Bisesti's
latest gig falls somewhere between Michelangelo's at the Sistine Chapel and Eldin's on Murphy Brown. The painter labors for hours each
day on his back, scaffolded to within arm's length of
the ceiling. Some weeks he's on a ladder instead, neck craned backward and
brush angled skyward. All of this grueling contortion goes toward the creation
of room after room of heavenly murals--all for one house.
But the "Villa de Reve"-as Bill and Millie
Gohres call their 10,000-square-foot residence-is more like a European palace,
with imported art pieces and fixtures covering just about every inch. Bisesti's job is to help make this "Dream House"
come true. Bisesti has been a freelance artist since
leaving the University of Hartford thirty years ago. He isn't really a live-in
house painter, but after more than three years working under one roof, if his
body isn't there, his mind usually is. "I think about it twenty-four hours
a day," he says. "In the back of my dreams, there are always colors
and sketches."
The recesses of Bisesti's mind may be as vital to the
project as his steady hand. Sometimes he starts with nothing but bare plaster,
vivid imagination, and cranked-up Van Halen (on
headphones, of course). But due to Bill Gohres' eclectic tastes--Bisesti calls him "the quintessential
Victorian"--each room generally comes with a theme and a
"given." In the "Czar room," for example, the mood is
Baroque and the centerpiece is a reproduction of Adolphe
Bouguereau's "The Birth of Venus" glued to
a ceiling. From such starting points, Bisesti
embellishes the entire space--walls, too-- mimicking the master's technique. He
will also work with an interior designer's motif, which has meant dreaming in chinoiserie for months. What stands out in the finished
product, says Jeri Packe of the Pavilion Design
Group, is Bisesti's ability
as a trompe I'oeil artist.
"Tom's very good at giving visual distance to a wall. He paints gardens
that look like you can see off a balcony for a half mile." He goes to
great lengths to create the effect. To capture the third dimension in a scene
of jovial characters overlooking the Gohres' foyer, Bisesti
built a mini balcony in his backyard, dressed friends in Renaissance-style
costumes, lay on his back, and took a photograph.
Another Bisesti quality is an eye for proportion,
according to Bill Gohres. "He's able to take a Picture of famous art from
a book, put it in the right size, and make it all come together in a
room." This is exceptionally difficult, Gohres adds, considering his home' s eccentricities, from irregular angles to a 558-pound
chandelier. And did Michelangelo ever have to paint over a smoke alarm?
Solutions for such problems don't just pop up in dreams. "Sometimes it's
more like a nightmare," the artist says. But, after suffering the normal
droughts of a studio artist's career, Bisesti has no
complaints about a regular paycheck. And he finds the Gohres' go-with-the-flow
spirit "liberating." Still, the "burnout factor" looms
around each corner. "It would be impossible for one person to do this
whole house," he says. So Packe has taken on a
big role in redecorating the ten year-old-home, which, by the year 2000, will
be used more often to host various fund-raisers for the Gohres' charitable
foundation.
Meantime, Bisesti can't wait to finish up so he can
hit the canvas again. "After this. I could
probably crank one out in a half-hour," he says of his contemporary
paintings. That's his true talent, Packe says.
"His work is very unique." But if that doesn't pay the rent, he could
probably find work at the next-door strip mall, where there's a business called
Ceiling concepts.
All contents ©copyright 1998 Las Vegas
Life magazine.
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