ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, December 10, 1996 TAG: 9612100141
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
Some people see angels in visions. Christine Tucker-Kelley sees them during dinner.
Seven of them, in fact. Little ones, like those little urchin-angels on the "love" stamps. All of them naked as jaybirds.
They are painted on her dining room ceiling. Painted with great effort, and at considerable expense.
Don't ask how much it cost.
It was worth it, she said.
"I've wanted this done my whole life," said Tucker-Kelley, who lives on Bent Mountain. "It's kind of a dream come true for me. I'm just infatuated with it. My husband's not an art person, but I think it even made him say 'Gosh.' Every bit of it is free-hand."
So how much did it cost?
"We wouldn't really want to say. I've got a little payment plan going."
Thousands of dollars?
"Oh, yeah."
Understand about these angels: They are no rich woman's idle fancy.
Tucker-Kelley works for a living, as an sales representative for a greeting card company. Her husband, Rick Kelley, works for American Electric Power.
The two were married in October '95, and still are putting the finishing touches on their new house. "We're both workaholics," Tucker-Kelley said. They have three dogs and no children.
But they have angels.
"I've always been fascinated by them," she said. "I like the - what's the word? Renaissance. The Renaissance look."
Artist Whitney Brock, who spent some 300 hours painting Tucker-Kelley's angels, said the Renaissance is in this year.
"It's just the rich gilded architectural features. Everything is coming back to detail and ornament," said Brock, who with her brother Christopher "Tofu" Lumpkin runs a wall-and-furniture art business called The Finishing Line. The business operates out of Brock's home. "Everything comes back around. We'll go back 20 years from now and do art deco on their ceilings."
Speaking of ceilings, painted ceilings definitely are in, Brock said. People often ask for clouds.
Tucker-Kelley wanted angels.
And not just any angels. Little angels. Love stamp angels. Cupids, without the bows and arrows. Cherubs.
"Babies' butts," said Brock, who is not overly sentimental about her work. "She wanted babies' butts."
"I wanted cherubs because they're like kids," explained Tucker-Kelly.
"It was great that she knew what she wanted, because it makes my life easy," Brock said.
To give the artist an idea of what she was looking for, Tucker-Kelley loaned her a picture.
The picture - artist unknown - was on a trash can Tucker-Kelley bought at Big Lots. "Everybody who knows me knows I'm a bargain shopper," she explained.
She said the painter kept the trash can for "several months."
Brock, who studied painting at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond and in New Zealand, insisted she did not use the trash can picture as a model for her angels.
Brock said she really got her angels out of a book about angels from Books-A-Million.
She conceded, however, that she put flowers in the little angels' curly hair because Tucker-Kelley had admired the way the artist did it on the trash can.
"She liked the flowers. She pointed that out first," Brock recalled.
In any event, the flowers make colorful accent marks.
Indeed, for anyone who may have had enough of angels, the flowers are a treat.
Also pleasing is the way the little cherubs seem to swirl in circles about the dining room chandelier - like happy infants caught up in a funnel cloud.
``I like art, but I never knew how much to appreciate it until I'd watched her do this," Tucker-Kelley said. "She had a little ladder. She'd take her neck break. Boy, she's picky. If she did part of it and didn't like it, she repainted.
"The real beauty was watching it take shape before my eyes."
"A bunch of naked cherubs running around," sighed her husband, when asked later how he felt about the mural.
But he added quickly: "They look nice. It definitely adds a touch to the room that is not typical. I think she did a good job. We had some good laughs about it. Whitney became like our sister there for about a month."
The work itself was a less than heavenly experience. First Brock did a rough version on wallpaper in her own garage, intending to paste it onto Tucker Kelley's ceiling later and do touch-up work.
The garage flooded.
Brock moved her soggy canvas inside - but soon regretted it. "The oil-based paint leaked through the canvas," she said. "I've got a negative of the mural on my hardwood floor."
When she finally got the half-finished painting to Tucker-Kelley's house and glued it to the dining room ceiling, she wrapped all the furniture in the room with plastic before beginning to paint again.
That is, all of it but one lovely cream-colored upholstered chair. Brock promptly dripped paint on the chair.
Burgundy paint.
"I froze," Brock recalled. "I cried. I called my mother. I dumped turpentine on it. It's now designated the non-smoking chair. I learned my lesson."
She learned other lessons. Like, thousands of dollars stretched over months of work add up to coolie wages.
Or was that tens of thousands?
"Thousands. Not tens of thousands. I told Christine no one would ever get this for that price again. Ever."
Calculated by an hourly wage, Tucker-Kelley agreed, her mural was "very inexpensive."
Rick Kelley said his wife has not told him what the mural cost. "I told her I didn't want to know."
Brock had other trials. Spending hours painting overhead, she developed neck aches, back aches. "It's very physically stressing. It made my whole body hurt," she said. Meanwhile, she was doing so much detail work she wore paint brushes right down to the metal.
But Brock also said Tucker-Kelley was "the most enthusiastic client I've ever had. She was totally happy. I could do no wrong."
As for Brock herself - well, angels are not really her thing.
When working for herself, Brock prefers making pottery and doing more experimental kinds of painting.
Still, "As long as my client's happy, I'll do whatever they want me to do," she said.
And did she never feel, even for a moment, as she painted all that rosy flesh and flowing drapery, that the spirit of the Renaissance was sitting on her shoulder?
"It did cross my mind with that first cherub," she admitted. "It was coming so easily. It was a great opportunity to try to measure up to the great masters."
Tucker-Kelley, anyway, has no complaints.
"We sat here and watched her bring these things to life,'' said Tucker-Kelley. "It amazed me.
"I'm just so proud of her."
LENGTH: Long : 136 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: DON PETERSEN Staff. 1. Artist Whitney Brock (left) spentby CNBmore 300 hours painting a heavenly scene on Christine
Tucker-Kelley's dining room ceiling. 2. Tucker-Kelley says her
cherubs - which frolic among flowers and birds around her chandelier
- remind her of children. There are seven angels in all. color. Type first letter of feature OR type help for list of commands FIND S-DB DB OPT SS WRD QUIT QUIT Save options? YES NO GROUP YOU'VE SELECTED: QUIT YES login: c