FINISHING THE MURAL

Lance worked diligently for seven months to bring his space mural to life. From the beginning he conceived a basic visual of what it would be and where he was going to go with it. But incorporating ideas from a painting he did in a Honolulu clothing store called, The Wizard, along with the inspiration of the comic books which forced him into the illusion, plus the configuration of the studio itself, he ended up creating a wonderfully colorful three-dimensional image looking outside of a spacecraft into the beyond.

At one point, there was so much going on, Lance felt like he was lost. To collect his thoughts and find a light at the end of the tunnel, he sat down and listed everything he still needed to do to finish.

During the process, people from the studio came over occasionally to see Lance's progress, except Eddie Kramer, of course. They never did hit it off. So it wasn't really a big surprise when he announced he was done.

Tearing it down, Lance removed hundreds of staples, rolled up the heavy one hundred foot long canvas, and he and a friend lugged it through the streets of Greenwich Village to the studio.

Installing the canvas in the narrow hallway, Lance planned it pretty well. There were certain places where the floor was uneven. The canvas wasn't going to bend at this point, stiff from coats of dried paint, so he cut it and pieced it together with rubber cement.

With help, it only took a couple of hours to staple it to the two battens (one by three inch strips of wood screwed to the top and the bottom of the wall). As he worked, everyone started coming out of the offices to watch him finish up. They'd seen the corridor walls looking the same way for so long, a boring gray speckled textured wallpaper. This certainly made a huge difference, kind of like when in The Wizard of Oz where the film changes from black and white to Technicolor.

Walking up and down the hallway, people stopped and gathered together in small groups of two and three to discuss the mural and Lance's talent. Suddenly, Eddie Kramer darted out of his office while Lance was still stapling. Way amped, he ignored everyone around and walked the length of the corridor, his eyes intensely viewing Lance's masterpiece. "Gee," Eddie finally spoke in front of everyone standing around. "If I was rude to you, I'm sorry, man. I had no idea what you were doing here."

The crowd went dead silent and dropped back. As Eddie turned to talk to a staff member on the other side of the hallway, a couple of secretaries approached Lance, "Do you realize what just happened?

"What are you talking about?" Lance asked, distracted but kind of confused.

"Eddie Kramer just apologized to you in public," the other secretary said.

It took a minute for it to sink in, then Lance smiled to himself and finished wrapping things up.