WALL TO WALL / COAST TO COAST

Artist paints landscapes of the Midwest, ocean scenery for giant mural at new condos in Twin Lakes

By Kay Jones

Photo by Brian Passino

TWIN LAKES -- As a little girl, Lori Schory was fascinated as she watched her mother use paints to give three dimensions to a flat piece of canvas.

Now Schory herself is giving that third dimension to whole walls, creating murals of seascapes and landscapes and frontier towns.

Schory, of Powers Lake, grew up in a household of artists.

"My father was an industrial designer; my mother was a portrait artist and did still lifes and landscapes," she said. "When I was a little girl, I watched my mother paint for hours."

Schory discussed her inspiration as she showed off her latest project, the murals surrounding the indoor pool at the new Lake Mary Resort Condominiums.

She has used her palate of paints to create what she has named Sea to Shining Sea on the walls surrounding the condo's pool.

On one end of the 40- by 60-foot room is a typical Connecticut seacoast, on the other are California sands leading to the ocean. Along the long wall in the center are the forested hills of the Midwest surrounding an inland lake not unlike Lake Mary, which is framed in the floor-to-ceiling windows along the wall.

"I'm surprised that worked out as well as it did," she said as she discussed how the tree line of the opposite bank of Lake Mary flows into the hillside pictured on the wall. "The windows were covered while I worked. I wasn't sure...."

Schory earned a master's degree in fine arts from Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Ill., in 1981 and spent the following five years in New York City pursuing a career as an artist.

She describes her work of that period as "borrowing commercial graphic techniques from our pop culture to paint figurative paintings using acrylics on Plexiglas."

But she found the life of the struggling artist in the Big Apple was hard. It was sign painting that paid the bills.

She returned to this area to be near her family in Park Ridge, Ill., and built a business doing custom lettering and pictorial signs. After working six years in Chicago as a subcontractor for sign shops, she opened Lori's Signs & Graphics in Powers Lake 13 years ago.

Sometimes in her graphics work she uses those same techniques of exaggerated figures and brash colors that she favored in her New York work.

Other times she follows the traditional style of the landscape artist, as in the Lake Mary project.

For children's rooms, she casts her work in the cartoon character mold to decorate their wall with favorite characters from storybooks and space stories.

Once she painted her murals on wall-size vinyl sheeting to decorate a hospital cafeteria for Christmas. The sheeting is taken down, rolled and stored after the holidays until the next year.

Schory does not limit herself to murals, or even signs. She will, in fact, paint just about anything that will stand still.

She paints pictures and designs on old as well as unpainted furniture. She paints signs on old barn wood that look antique, to be used in home decor.

She has used epoxy paints to add mermaids to the bottoms of swimming pools.

She paints logos on race cars, houses and boats.

Once she even painted a rusty antique French mailbox, turning it into a piece of Provencal design.

She traveled the country painting the signs as well as the graphics to decorate the walls of each location in a chain of theme restaurants.

She painted two murals at Great America theme park in Gurnee, Ill.: One is of a man teeing off on a 54-foot wall for the Par for the Course game; the other is a wall of cartoon character bowling pins for the Roll Away Game.

The pool room in the 12-unit condo in Twin Lakes ranks as her largest project to date.

Typically clients provide her with photos of the scene they want or choose from photos that she supplies. Some may want a particular item worked into the scene that she paints from life.

"They provide me with as much imagery as they can to work from. It cuts down on the cost if I don't have to do a lot of research," she said.

She then paints poster board samples so the customer knows just what is going on the wall.

"Sometimes I can spend weeks and weeks painting samples," she said.

For the pool room, she used latex wall paints in an exterior soft gloss with a moldicide, of course, because of the danger of mold in a pool room.

She uses whatever technique creates the effect she wants: The water, she did with rollers; the flowers with sponges; the detail with brushes; an airbrush gives the clouds in the ceiling the realistically soft look.

All in all, it was 11 days of work.

Next up is "Fat Cat" for the Racine street exhibit of decorated felines.