This is what makes me stand out,
”
she says, pointing the brush toward a bottle of fluorescent pink
tempera in her left hand, which looked suspiciously like it’s been
stolen from Cindy Lauper’s palette.
”
I tried white, which was too stark. I tried red and white, which
made pink, but it still wasn’t right. Now I buy this by the
gallon.
”
This is what makes me stand out,” she says, pointing the brush toward a bottle of fluorescent pink tempera in her left hand, which looked suspiciously like it’s been stolen from Cindy Lauper’s palette. “I tried white, which was too stark. I tried red and white, which made pink, but it still wasn’t right. Now I buy this by the gallon.”
Susan Grazer has been painting holiday windows for more than four decades, and despite any initial reservations, the swaths of pink highlights she begins to apply on the windows of The Music Tree in Morgan Hill blend tone on tone with the red applied minutes earlier. Together they really do look natural … as natural as fluorescent pink can be.
Passers by stop to comment on the work in progress – “Cute,” “Neat,” “How do you do that?”
“Lots of practice,” comes the reply from the petite blonde woman hunched over her work. As a child, Grazer routinely got in trouble for coloring on the walls of her parents’ home. Now she gets paid for it.
“We were pulling up (to the shop) and my daughter said, ‘I bet you have to be really old and really experienced to do that,'” says Deborah Suzuki as her daughter Esther, 12, watches Grazer’s swift strokes finish off a bough of holly.
Grazer shifts her knees on the ground once more and says, “Well, that’s 42 years of experience for you, but I started this when I was 16.”
The story starts in Monrovia, where Grazer and her mother were working in a toy store in the mid-1960s.
“Someone from the store did the windows for Christmas and I thought they were just ugly,” said Grazer. “I did the only thing I could: I asked if I could do them the next year.”
Grazer honed her skills with a sort of practice. A gas station in town let her and a friend paint their windows. ”
It took us all day and we got $5 each and it looked awful,” she said, but soon the forms came to life and she began doing a monthly window for the toy store.
An Associate Degree in Graphic Design from Pasadena City College was next and Grazer felt that she was on her way.
She got married and moved to Cupertino with her husband, a student at San Jose State University.
She didn’t paint windows anymore, but soon found herself pulled back into the work.
“I did it because we were hungry,” said Grazer, referring to the year she returned to the old standby. “We were hungry, and I had this baby. I went door-to-door in downtown Cupertino. Everyone said no, but finally this lady who owned a beauty parlor said okay. It was the recession, so I did it for $5, but that was enough for food for a couple of days.”
These days she charges between $100 and $250 per storefront, but then Grazer simply felt lucky.
The beauty salon, it turned out, catered to local businesswomen, many of whom began to call her to do window painting for them.
“It got to be quite the job,” said Grazer, who continued to build her reputation by word of mouth when she moved to Morgan Hill nearly two decades ago.
At the height of her window painting business, she had more than 200 clients each holiday season. This year she has three.
“I’m trying to retire, but they won’t seem to let me,” said Grazer, gesturing toward a couple of the shops whose owners she feels closest to. “Besides, the inside is so much easier on the knees in this weather when you’ve got arthritis like mine.”
Hence Grazer’s more recent career path. Seven years ago, at the age of 51, she decided to focus her creative energies on trompe l’oeil.
Realism is a key element of the French style, which means “fool the eye.” Grazer has created illusions of peaceful gardens in people’s bedrooms, the look of aged European plaster in their dining rooms, and murals depicting the local countryside in office buildings from Hollister to Saratoga.
“I like the fanciful ‘Fantasia’ stuff,” said Grazer. “When I do rooms, especially kids’ rooms, I sit down with them and really try to make the room fit them.”
Murals average around $2,000 each, but Bravo’s paintings for children’s rooms are distinctly less expensive, anywhere from $250 to $800 since children will likely outgrow the custom designs she places in their rooms.
Grazer doesn’t miss window painting most of the time (“I have to work fast to keep from stiffening up.”), but it’s a comforting mainstay.
“Everybody expected me to be so creative and clever,” said Grazer. “I was running out of ideas, but now it’s nice to do a few of these.”
Just don’t look for her around town next year, said Grazer.
“Really, I’m done this time,” she said.
Well, that remains to be seen.
For more information on Grazer’s work in trompe l’oeil, call her at (408) 683-4426.
