Jerry Dame, December 2005.

"I'm trying to find and paint the overlooked beauty in things that are
available if only you take the time to notice them." 

The Value of Proper Perspective.

 Jerry Dame was born in Amarillo Texas while his Father did military service.  They moved on to the San Fernando Valley while his father  worked at a Chevy factory.  He grew up drawing airplane wings with proper perspective under the tutelage of his father and his mother  saved his early art work.  They must have known. 

Jerry was just an average student at Grover Cleveland High School in Receda, California until a high school guidance counselor finally got it right and placed Jerry in art classes where he excelled. 

After high school, Jerry went to college for a little while then married his high school sweetheart, Ann.  He dropped out of college to support her, and a few years later they had two sons, Dennis and  Michael.  Jerry worked night shift on the assembly line at the Van  Nuys Chevrolet Plant where his father was plant engineer, but he  always kept painting.  In this time Jerry took correspondence school  art courses at the same school Schulz of Peanuts fame did.  That school advertised on the covers of matchbooks.  So much for  cigarettes being dangerous to your health.

Cars, trains, automobiles, and motorhomes have been good to Jerry Dame.

Jerry started pinstriping cars for friends to make a little extra money.Jerry called on Von Dutch* (The Rembrandt of Auto Pinstriping) the  legendary and eccentric pinstriping guru who told him how to mix special paints.  Leaving the assembly line he started working on commission in the service department at a Ford dealership until things got slow.  "One week I made fifteen dollars at Ford.  That same week, on one day, I made two hundred fifty dollars by painting a  Volkswagen.  I quit my day job. When I told my wife, she just said, "Even if we eat beans the rest of our lives we'll do it.”  I have made my living as a painter ever since." 

What's Up Doc meets Mr. Meat! 

Jerry has pinstriped legendary Mel Blanc's Rolls Royce (Blanc was the  voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and many others).  Jerry also pinstriped for a meat supplier to the film industry dubbed Mr. Meat,  because of his trade.  Hah, you laugh, but the cars Jerry painted for  Mr. Meat were a Maserati and his wife's Rolls Royce. That's a lot of  pork chops!

When Jerry airbrushed a show car trunk with an "I dream of Jeannie"   cloud he unwittingly launched an entire new form of art. (*Check out  the life of Von Dutch at www.letterhead.com/articles/bob_burns/vondutch/) 

More Hollywood. 

"I worked for a fruit basket manufacturer in Canoga Park, CA. who had  bought and was storing an old narrow gage train which he leased to  the movie industry.  In the middle of an orange grove sat a bunch of  long, narrow windowless barns with hundreds of antique cars and this  steam locomotive from Hawaii.  The cars were kept end to end and they  were so dusty you couldn't tell the different colors from each  other.  Difficult working conditions.  I didn't paint it, but The  Streetcar Named Desire was kept in that barn also." 

People said we were crazy but we did it anyway. 

Jerry moved his family to Myrtle Creek Oregon In 1972 after frequent  visits to a friend who had moved there.  They pulled up stakes while  his painting business was at its' peak.  "People said we were crazy  to move away, especially to tiny Myrtle Creek, Oregon, but we did  anyway.   There wasn't much work there.  We built a two-bedroom house  just in time for December snow.   We had a little wood heater and no money. 

Lots of Gas Tanks. 

He looked for work at motorcycle shops but "There was nothing until I  got some work from a Harley Davidson dealer who knew of my reputation.  I did lots of gas tanks.  That work expanded and I got   more work from the Chevy dealership, Siegl/Tonkins in Grants Pass.  Jim Siegl Junior had a drag racer he had me paint.  That friendship  led to pinstriping cars again, including a lot for Auto Martin Mercedes.” 

Unique and Sealable???????? 

"The most unusual job I've ever done was when the City of Coquille  created a Bicentennial Time Capsule made from a child sized coffin.  I did the pinstriping for it!  They wanted something that was unique  and sealable." 

But wait:  there's more! 

Jerry joined his two sons in the world of motorcoach murals so familiar to anyone who drives the roads of North America.  That genre  of art was successful beyond any possible realm of imagination.  What started as a few basic designs expanded and expanded and expanded to scores of designs, and it made for some hectic years once the designs became big selling points for the motorhomes.  It also fed Jerry's passion for oil painting and he proudly shows a portfolio of wildlife paintings that came out of those years.  As with his other work,  Jerry paints animals well.  Some saw a gas guzzling oddity, Jerry saw a canvas for beauty. 

Stopping and smelling the roses. 

A widower, Jerry Dame now lives with his lovely wife Lisa in the center of Harrisburg on the Willamette River.  Lisa grew up in Harrisburg and her grandfather owned one of the classic buildings that give the town its old world feel.   Jerry is prolific.  He paints in his office on a desk with an easel fixed to the surface.  He has to take the paintings out of the room so he can look at them  from afar. 

Lately, Jerry has been painting smaller, pastoral scenes of cows,  sheep, hay fields, a man repairing a fence.  They are gentle and quiet and they speak of a tranquility in a world before the industrial revolution of electricity, constant music, amplification,  radio, or television.  Jerry takes his painting very seriously and speaks with admiration for other painters who commit to their craft and show mastery of it. 

Jerry talks about his stepson's Lakota grandfather who, while confronting difficult health issues, encouraged his family "to show love for one another and to share your banner of peace.  I want you to show your care for the Earth . . ." 

Jerry ties that sentiment into his life's work.  "That's true,  because all the cars and motorcycles I painted were owned by people who took such  precious care of their stuff.  It ties in with the relaxation or the beauty that I see in a place or a person . . . it's all tied in,  having an appreciation. "

"My life has been hugely blessed by what I can see and feel and smell, the Willamette Valley and the Pacific Northwest.  People must work, have jobs, not be lazy, yet need to have the time to appreciate what's around them, even things as simple as weeds. 

Jerry Dame says gently, " I'm a Christian, so I look at things from a perspective of something created beautifully by a master creator."  He points to a painting hanging in his living room of  a man setting a  wooden fence post beside a small stand of  Queen Ann's Lace, "Queen  Ann's Lace is a weed, but beautiful.  I'm trying to find and paint  the overlooked beauty in things that are available if only you take  the time to notice them."

©Joey Emil Blum, 2005.