Bordered with floor-to-ceiling glass cases of model aircraft and
cluttered with art supplies, sketches, photographs and maps, Joe
Kline’s studio looks like a cross between a military command
station and a specialty toy shop.
Bordered with floor-to-ceiling glass cases of model aircraft and cluttered with art supplies, sketches, photographs and maps, Joe Kline’s studio looks like a cross between a military command station and a specialty toy shop.
Wednesday afternoon, the 60-year-old longtime Gilroyan put the finishing touches on a print of a Vietnam-era Huey helicopter landing amid a haze of smoke from a detonated grenade. Like 90 percent of his limited-edition prints of military aircraft, this one bore the customized nose art and unit markings of the recipient’s own helicopter.
By day, Kline is the City of Gilroy’s public information officer. Before that, he served 27 years as a mechanical engineer for McCormick & Company, which used to own Gilroy Foods & Flavors. But for nearly 40 years, Kline, who served as a Huey helicopter crew chief in Vietnam, has been painting military aircraft – a hobby that’s turned into a flourishing business. For the first 20 years, he produced maybe three or four original commissions annually for veterans, their families and pilots.
“Some of these guys just had a faded black and white photo of themselves,” Kline said. “When their family members would present them with a painting in full color, some of them just turned to Jell-O.”
These days, he produces customized limited-edition prints from his originals, which allows him to sell them for much less to a wider audience.
Over the decades, Kline has drawn on his vast store of firsthand knowledge, a mountain of reference materials and his own attention to detail to build a thriving customer base. He has been commissioned to paint military scenes for Gen. Jimmy Doolittle and former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. His paintings have also hung on the walls of the U.S. Air Force Museum, U.S. Army Aviation Museum, the Legion of Valor Museum, and many other galleries and museums featuring artwork of military aircraft. This summer, two of Kline’s paintings – “God’s Own Lunatics” and “Good Vibrations” – will be displayed alongside the work of 42 artists from around the world at the American Society of Aviation Artists 2010 International Aerospace Art Exhibition at the San Diego Aerospace Museum.
“There’s a story behind every painting,” Kline said, gesturing to the dozen or so prints that lined his living room wall. “The biggest gratification is the types of people (my painting) puts me in touch with. There’s a real emotional attachment and reaction people have with these paintings.”
So realistic are Kline’s paintings, they’ve evoked comments like, “When I look at your painting, I can hear the radios and smell the smoke,” Kline remembered one veteran saying.
“That’s what’s so gratifying,” he said. “What I want to try to do is help provide a visual legacy for veterans and their families.”
The miniature airplanes, tanks and helicopters suspended from wires and poised for takeoff in his studio are his models while the rest of the cozy room’s contents provide 40 years worth of accumulated reference materials from which he bases the thousands of prints he’s sold over the last four decades.
For one particularly unique commission, the client requested that Kline paint a nighttime helicopter raid from the enemy’s perspective on the ground. By rigging a model Nighthawk helicopter with a Christmas light – to mimic the craft’s spotlight – and turning out all the lights in his studio, Kline recreated the eerie scene.
“It was weird,” he said with a laugh. “But it worked.”
Though art professors criticized Kline’s hyperrealistic style in college during the emergence of modern and pop art, Kline knew he would find an outlet somewhere. The opportunity came after Vietnam, a country Kline still believes is one of the most beautiful in the world.
“We were too busy at those moments to be taking photographs,” Kline said. “My experience in Vietnam gave me a passion to paint it.”
His own father a B-25 bombardier in World War II, Kline enlisted in 1969 at the height of the Vietnam War. After basic training as a helicopter mechanic at Fort Lewis in Washington, Kline shipped out and was assigned to a helicopter maintenance unit at Qui Nhon in Vietnam. Several months of little activity there left Kline wanting to play a more active role. He requested and was granted a transfer to the 101st Airborne Division, the “Screaming Eagles,” so that he could fly.
“Looking back on it, I can say that I loved it,” Kline said, sitting at his dining room table, his 9-year-old grandson, Tyus, listening quietly to the tale. “I don’t know if I loved it at the time.”
Like his grandfather as a child, Tyus is a budding artist with an eye for detail. As Kline wrapped up a print for a client, his grandson sketched a drawing of a cement mixer from memory, absentmindedly tuning into Kline’s story.
“They’re all my favorites,” Tyus said of his grandfather’s paintings. “He’s the one that gave me the art of drawing.”
Despite popular movies and media coverage indicating otherwise, Kline guessed that the vast majority of Vietnam veterans were proud of how they served their country and would do it over again if asked.
“I feel the same way,” he said.
In fact, Kline was one of the first Vietnam veterans to organize a unit reunion in the pre-Internet era. Back when all he had was a phone book to rely on, Kline remembered poring over the small type and running into countless roadblocks when trying to contact old friends.
“If a person had a real common name, it was almost impossible,” he said. “But I knew the home states of most of these guys. We all got very close in Vietnam, so it was worth it.”
It’s the relationships he’s made over the years – either through his artwork or while in combat – that Kline cherishes most.
“I wouldn’t have traded the experience for anything,” he said. “It was a fantastic education, and I made lifelong friends.”
