Dowagiac native wrapping up year of work on world’s largest indoor mural
Published 2:58 am Thursday, November 11, 2004
By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
A year later, homegrown aviation artist Rick Herter is within weeks of completing the world's largest indoor mural.
Thirty-two feet tall and 900 feet long, Herter last November began painting his depiction of mankind's fascination with flying for the new Kalamazoo Air Zoo.
His big undertaking will land him in the Guinness Book of World Records next year.
Herter Wednesday morning spoke to two groups of students at Justus Gage Elementary School who previously examined the mural firsthand during a field trip made possible by the PTO and Dowagiac Union Schools Foundation.
Herter, dressed in an Air Force flight suit, signed autographs and let students try on his fireproof gear - a helmet with oxygen mask and Darth Vader visor, survival vest with food, water, a flare and mirror to signal with the sun, a gravity suit and gloves - before heading to a reception at Southwestern Michigan College.
SMC's art gallery is featuring his paintings through November, which for Herter is like going to a reunion because it's been so long since he's seen pieces borrowed from collections.
Herter familiarized the youngsters with such rudiments of flying as the thrust from propellers or jet engines, lift from the wings, gravity and drag.
He also exposed them to art tools he used to create a painting where the heavens look ablaze in red, pink, orange and yellow rather than puffy white clouds bobbing in a blue sky.
He also pointed out vapor wisps and ground that looks like it's rushing by to suggest movement by the aircraft in a static painting. A Spitfire approaching a grass runway gives him a chance to indulge another passion, landscapes.
Herter relies on a combination of photos and videotapes he makes in the air and a studio full of model aircraft "to do what I do on canvas."
He gave students a slide show so he could demonstrate camouflage and they could feel like they had "gone for a ride" in an ejection seat on a fighter jet, wing to wing in close formation or refueling in midair with a boom operator in a tanker jet in "aerial ballet."
He pointed out the tube where air rushes in and connects to the air speed indicator, or speedometer, because of the importance to "know if you're going fast enough to fly."
Herter finds it especially enjoyable flying "maneuvers" in fighter jets - "hard, quick turns or turning over on our backs and flying upside down. We call it inverted. It's like driving a race car and not having to stay on the road."
Herter is internationally renowned for his work, which hangs in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, the Air Force Academy and the U.S. Naval Museum.
It was for a Kalamazoo air show that he first offered to paint a souvenir poster. That painting went on to garner a national award.
Today Herter is in demand by military and corporate clients alike, including Boeing, Rolls Royce, G.E. Aerospace, UPS, the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy and the air forces of Israel, Singapore and the Netherlands.
The White House commissioned Herter to paint images of American air forces fighting in Iraq.