Before the light

I worked as the regional artist for the Department of Agriculture for a number of years, believe it or not it was a fantastic job, I spent very little time in the office, traveled a lot to photograph scenes and subjects, and built very large scale scenes and exhibits all over the province, The biggest show was the Royal Agricultural Show, which kept me busy for about four months of every year. The first three shows took place in an A-frame structure with adjoining bungalow, the last big show I did was in a bigger, square hall, unfortunately I do not have any internal pictures of this show. 

I also converted an old house into a walk through soil conservation museum and exhibit, sadly I only have a few pictures of this work left, I also did shows all over the province as previously stated, The fun part of this was that I got to do my own carpentry, collect materials for scenes and generally had fun. Sadly the salary would not support a family with children so I had to move on, but I still have a lot of good memories of working with my hands, getting covered in paint, almost falling from a three level scaffold and various other fun things

Year one

The entry to the A frame building

Year Two

The same entry to the A frame building. When the door was open, it showed a cave 

entrance in the mountainside, so it worked with door open or closed

Year three

The same entry to the A frame building. Painting the scene, 

this was the best part of my job, in the fresh air with music playing and on being my own.

 

These two pics show the door open and closed. The sliding door is mounted on the outside and covers part of the picture when opened. I tried to ensure that the mural worked with door open and door closed.

  The first 'donga' I built out of large blocks of polystyrene, this one filled the whole room, This particular room was converted into a scene featuring three large murals the following year, those scenes are depicted below in the three cattle scenes in South Africa

This is the second bit of erosion I caused, also made from large blocks of polystyrene. This particular donga runs down a passage and is a walk through exhibit in a soil conservation museum. The model itself is ceiling high, and as it was on old building the ceilings are a lot higher that the newer buildings

Side wall of the walk through donga

  

A model depicting forestry practices. I tried to give all the displays
I worked on a 3D feel by painting the scene onto the back and side walls.
This was one of many models I built, I do not have many descent photos of the others.

The trees are made from a hacked up Christmas tree.

This was a 24 meter mural I worked on in the final show that I did, unfortunately it is the only picture I have of that show, This was from a newspaper article. I did this 24 meter mural as well as four large self contained 3D format scenes.

 A scale model of the show building. I made this so I could plan all the visual displays before  starting work, also it was a big help as I worked with Scientists who had very little visual conceptualizing skills, so it was a great help to show them the concepts in miniature which intern helped me interpret their requirements

At the bottom of this post is a scene showing a settlers room. 

The following two pics show the 'outside wall' of the settlers room and a veldt scene 

Three Pictures covering three walls of a room depicted 

various stage of Cattle in early South Africa 

Wall 1

 Wall 2

 Wall 3

The same scene showing both wall 2 and 3 pictures 

A filler wall showing a KwaZulu-Natal farm scene

The following three scenes consist of 4 approx eight ft high pallets .

I painted them flat and the set them up in a semi-circular formation 

and dressed  the foreground to create a 3D effect

Scene 1

 Scene 2

Scene 3

In the next four pictures are three themes. This is the same room. 

Year one

I turned the room into a settlers Room.

Year two 

I made it into a cave

Year three

was a sheep theme, so I made a outdoors farm scene

View of  side and back walls

view of front and side walls