Artist Inks Her Way Into a Phenomenon

Not long ago, it wasn’t difficult to find Melanie Taylor Kent, or one of the artist’s colorful serigraphs, for that matter. As recently as 1984, Kent could regularly be spotted among other artists at various local street shows in Encino or Westwood, selling her silk-screened prints for $200 each.

But things have changed. Now that she is considered by many gallery owners to be one of the country’s most popular serigraphers, purchasing one of the Encino-based artist’s original works is often more complicated.

“She’s a modern-day phenomenon,” said Phil Wasserman, president of Artistic Investments, a Florida-based company that distributes Kent’s serigraphs to numerous art galleries in Florida. “When people hear about her future works, they want to give us money before they even know the price or when they will be available. Some of the galleries sell out before the serigraphs even arrive.”

According to Kent, nearly 150 galleries nationwide carry her serigraphs. Kent’s first two serigraphs contained 300 prints to a series; she has since boosted that number to 500.

One Color at a Time

Unlike a poster of a painting, which can be mass-produced by presses that print all of the picture’s colors at one time, serigraphs must be hand-fed through the printer, and only one color can be laid down at a time. Kent’s serigraphs, which illustrate some of the country’s most celebrated and larger-than-life events in activity-packed detail, contain as many as 150 colors.

In recent years, she was among the artists commissioned to draw the opening of the 1984 Olympic Games and the rededication of the Statue of Liberty. She also did a serigraph of the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in New York.

Kent is working on a serigraph celebrating Walt Disney World’s 15th anniversary, which will be issued soon.

Kent says her fascination with modern events came when she took a leave of absence from her 10-year teaching position at San Fernando High School in Pacoima in 1978 to have a baby.

“Walking the floor with a colicky baby who’s crying all the time can turn your mind into a mushroom,” the 40-year-old mother of two recalled recently from her office at Aurora Serigraphics in Van Nuys, where the last eight of her serigraphs have been printed.

“So I started looking around at what other artists were doing, just to keep from going crazy. There are all of these wonderful events going on in the country today, and I realized that no one else was painting them.”

Colorful, Happy Drawings

The first gallery to recognize the marketability of Kent’s serigraphs was Lori’s Gallery in Woodland Hills. Owner Carol Redlich says she immediately saw that Kent’s colorful, happy artwork filled a niche.

“When it came to Americans in my gallery, I was lost,” Redlich said. “Most artists draw cows, ducks, geese or flowers. But people here in the Valley don’t want to put cows in their living rooms. What Melanie is portraying is fun and whimsical and as American as Mom, apple pie and baseball. But she’s more than an artist--she also is creating a history of the current times.”

Kent’s work is now well-known among numerous galleries, although not necessarily among museums that specialize in American art. One explanation, according to a spokesman at the UCLA Grunwald Center for Graphic Art, is that many successful contemporary artists are represented exclusively by galleries, and their work does not appear in museums.

A former art and history major at UCLA, Kent now thinks of herself as a recorder of history as well as an artist, and hopes her works will become time capsules of modern-day Americana.

‘America Back Then’

“Maybe people will look at these 100 years from now and think, ‘This was America back then.’ Or maybe,” she added, “they’ll think, ‘How funny everyone looked.’ ”

All of her pictures contain hundreds of easily recognizable people, along with historical references. In her Liberty serigraph, for example, are the faces of 101 famous immigrants throughout history being sworn in by former Chief Justice Warren Burger--among them New York Philharmonic conductor Zubin Mehta, John Lennon, Henry Kissinger and Albert Einstein. Trying to determine who they are, and why they are there, she said, makes it a little like playing Trivial Pursuit.

Kent’s serigraphs also contain humorous aspects. In addition to the other famous immigrants in the Liberty serigraph, for example, Kent included “E.T.” and Mr. Spock of “Star Trek.”

Since Kent’s serigraphs depict an event before it takes place, the artist says she must gather as much information as possible, and then “fantasize the rest.” In the case of the Liberty serigraph, Kent met with David Wolper, the event’s planner, a year before the event.

“He told me about the famous people who would be singing and dancing, that the President was going to be pinning medals on 10 famous American immigrants and that there we would be tall ships, a laser show and fireworks.”

Travels to the Site

In most cases, Kent travels to the site of an approaching event and takes hundreds of photographs to ensure accuracy. Last week, Kent returned from Philadelphia, where she was conducting research for her depiction of the 200th anniversary of the U. S. Constitution on Sept. 17.

“They’re going to have an eight-hour parade, the biggest one in history, that converges on Independence Hall,” she explained.

As an artist, however, she also reserves the right to take certain liberties. Pointing to one of her serigraphs of the return of the cable cars to San Francisco, which she completed in 1984, Kent acknowledged that certain things had been changed.

“All of the buildings had to be correct and drawn so that they would be recognized,” she explained. But instead of rendering them in gray, as they actually appear, Kent painted them in festive blues, purples and pinks.

Today, the appeal of Kent’s upbeat, happy portrayals of places and events is so strong that her calendar is fully booked until 1992.

In addition to her serigraph of Walt Disney World and the 200th anniversary the U. S. Constitution, Kent’s current projects include the 50th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge on May 17, the 1988 Winter Olympics and the centennial Rose Parade on Jan. 1, 1989. According to Jack French, president of the Tournament of Roses, Kent is the only artist licensed to print an official serigraph of the event.

Work Will Honor Vienna

Also, because she fell in love with the movie “Amadeus,” Kent is creating a work to honor Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Vienna.

In order to complete her work, Kent says she almost is forced to work around the clock. “At about 3 a.m., it’s time to go to bed so I can get up with the kids at 7 a.m.,” she said. “I have to work that way in order to get them all done. If the prints come out after the event, it’s a little beside the point.”

Not surprisingly, the cost of her prints has also risen with her popularity. Today, people reserve her works even before they reach the printers at a cost of about $750 per print. They can cost about $3,000 once they are displayed in a gallery, according to several galleries. Her earlier editions, which she sold at outdoor art markets, now are valued at as much as $5,000, according to two gallery owners.

Galleries didn’t always clamor for her work, however. Kent recalled taking her first two prints of Rodeo Drive and Hollywood Boulevard to various galleries across the country, and assuming they would display her work on sight.

“Every weekend, my husband and I would get in the car or on a plane to show another gallery my work,” she said. Although numerous galleries liked her work, she said, they told her it would not be possible to display her work beside such famous artists as Pierre Auguste Renoir, Pablo Picasso or Salvador Dali.

Didn’t Know Prerequisite

“I didn’t know you had to be famous to have your art there,” she laughed. “Perhaps it was naive of me, but I just thought you had to be good.”

It was then that the artist literally took her show on the road--to neighborhood art shows and to galleries across the country.

Once she had established herself, however, there was the practical side of her business to consider. Unlike most artists whose work is published and distributed by outside companies, Kent formed her own corporation to accomplish those tasks. It is a challenge the artist says could not even have been considered, were it not for the emotional and professional support of her husband.

A lawyer with a successful practice in Beverly Hills, Bob Kent had spent the majority of his weekends between 1981 and 1984 traveling with his wife to various galleries throughout the country. After the completion of her 1984 Olympic Games serigraph, however, it become apparent to him that his wife’s career had taken a dramatic turn.

Continued Law Practice

“Until then, the business didn’t pay for itself, and so continuing my law practice was necessary,” he recalled. “But after the ‘Let the Games Begin’ serigraph, the demand for her work increased so much that she said she couldn’t handle the business side of it and keep up with painting at the same time.”

Kent recalled that, when she first asked her husband to give up his law practice to help her, he agreed only to try it for one day.

“He thought there would be nothing to do. That first Monday he took off from work, he said, ‘Maybe one of my lawyer friends will give me something to do.’ The phone started ringing at 9 a.m., and he never left. He’s hired a secretary and two delivery people to help him now.”