The Jazz Wall

Ian,

You are always full of surprises. When I think I understand or can figure you out - you make me expand my thinking and understanding. The origin of the Jazz Wall is one of those "emergent" situations where my expectations were met with your creativity.

We moved into our house in Austin and "assigned rooms." The small room doubled as Danny's room and the office, while you took the first room and Caylea the second - connected by the Jack and Jill bathroom. Personalization -that is what you guys wanted. For you, it was sports. At that time, entering into Jr. High, you were a basketball freak and interested in football, and really all sports. The plan was to paint the wall and have footballs, basketballs and other sports equipment to be cartooned on the wall. We needed paint. We got a brown for a football, orange for basketball and white and black for outlining. Aunt Shelley offered her overhead projector so that we could put an image on a wall that we could outline. Before we could paint, we went to either Michaels or Garden Ridge, probably the later, and looked for pictures, artwork, etc. for yours and Caylea's new rooms. You lit upon a set of paintings of musicians playing instruments. There were 2-3 5x7 and one large 11x13. We only have one remaining - your sister Caylea treasures it and has loaned it for our dining room right now. It is of an African American musician in a red coat playing a purple sax. The prints were lively, colorful and interesting. What surprised me is that you were into sports, into rock, into non-jazz music, but these prints of jazz musicians captured your attention. They would stay on your wall until several fell and broke and you moved rooms. 

Mom and Caylea went out of town - probably to visit Aunt Shelley and left you and I to do your room. We had agreed to an accent wall on the far side. We used the grey primer to cover the wall. I like to paint, you loved to help and we banged through that quickly. I worked mainly on the edges using the ladder Mom had got me and you worked on the inside. Now came the color. We agreed that we were going to make the basketball color orange the base and paint the shapes on it and not have to fill in the basketball. So we got going. It took two coats to get it smooth - so we worked hard and our 12 foot ceilings are HIGH. It was a struggle to make it look good and not get on other walls - but we did okay. The color ended up being UT orange - you were thrilled. Now to do the football - the brown we picked up looked awful - kaka brown to be exact. That was NOT going to work. However, we could not stop - you wanted to finish. My question was finish what? You then presented your idea - put instruments on the wall - using the prints as the template. Okay, that sounded interesting - so we got to work. 

We traced the guitar, trumpets, sax, and drums on paper. You then described how you wanted to arrange them - all surrounding a central space. I followed your lead and we projected, traced together with black paint from bottom left to bottom center - a sax, a snare drum, a trumpet, another sax, a kettle drum and a guitar. The guitar was especially cool looking but it and the kettle drum were right near the floor. Mom later pointed out that we could put nothing against the wall to block these the way we painted it. She was right. you wanted everything visible. Your bed would go under the first sax and only short things under the guitar and a chair could be farther in front of  the drum - it was tall. Interesting, Caylea organized the room similarly - even with the Jazz wall gone after you moved to A&M. Now we had a orange wall with black outlines of instruments. Not much color. You then added the part I was not expecting. I thought you would put "Rock", or some other thing in the space. But true to the iconic pictures the wall was based on - you chose "JAZZ" to be on the wall. Indeed, you designed it with Kiss "S" looking like backward z's. You took the lead to project and trace. My contribution was white shadowing. In the end, it really looked cool. We were so excited about our accomplishment. 

I think everyone like the wall - it was a organizational pain due to the low "major" pictures frustrating decorating strategies, but it was unique, cool and creative - all who you are! Your friends loved it and were amazed that you could "design your own room." The Jazz wall lasted a long time - until you moved out of the room to go into Caylea's room. When Caylea moved back, we took pictures of you and the wall - a handsome, muscular senior - a big change from the skinny cute 7th grader who conceived and painted the wall. What a marker of your growing up those pictures were - how you matured, grown and became - but how you maintained your individuality, cool-ness and creativity!!! 

I wish we did more projects like that! We did several - but the Jazz wall holds a very special place in this Dad's heart.

Love you "e"

Dad