Press Democrat

This article appeared in the Press Democrat on Wednesday, May 6, 1998

The first thing you notice as you wander through the crowded and cavernous workshops on this former dairy outside of town is the tyrannosaurus rex.

The stegosaurus catches your eye, too. So do Duke Ellington and Lewis and Clark. That large, metallic-looking panel resembles something out of the Death Star reactor room from "Star Wars," and that 10-foot translucent skull would fit perfectly in a Wagner opera, which it did.

This is William Kreysler and Associates, a 15-year-old firm that uses computerized digital mapping and milling to create architectural elements, film and stage props, and, most notably, helps artists transform scale models into mammoth sculpture.

"It's exactly what artists have always done," said William Kreysler, who started the company 15 years ago. "Rodin made models, then subcontracted the work out. If you only get two large-scale projects a year, it doesn't make sense to maintain your own shop."

That's why Duke Ellington is standing here, along with two legs, minus a body, almost twice life size and clad in frontier leather: Kreysler isn't sure if they belong to Lewis or Clark.

Venice, Calif., artist Robert Graham, one of the world's foremost figurative sculptors, brought Kreysler his clay scale model of Ellington. Then the San Anselmo firm, Scansite, used a digital camera armed with a laser beam to scan the model's surface, taking measurements every 6/10ths of a millimeter. The data was fed into a modeling program, which created a 3-D rotatable image. This, in turn, guided Kreysler's computer-controlled milling machine, which fashioned a 9-foot-tall Ellington out of foam.

At this stage, the artist can either have Kreysler coat the foam with fiberglass as the finished piece, or have the company use the foam to make a mold out fiberglass or silicone rubber, which is then filled with plaster or wax and shipped to a foundry for a final cast metal version.

Graham's Ellington was cast in bronze, and now stands next to a bronze grand piano at the upper East Side corner of Central Park in New York City, joining statues of Gen. Sheridan and Columbus at other entrances to the park, "the first significant public art piece commissioned by the city of New York in 40 years," Kreysler said.

As public art often does, Graham's generated some controversy: the piano legs are 4-foot-tall female nudes. Graham also used Kreysler to create Sculpture panels for the new FDR Memorial in Washington, D.C.

The Lewis and Clark figures are part of the 20-foot-diameter memorial commissioned by the city of St. Louis, sculpted by Eugene Daub, the internationally known artist recently moved to Sebastopol.

Sculptor Claes Oldenburg, renowned for his enormous sculptures of everyday objects, such as the huge baseball bat in downtown Chicago, has used Kreysler and Associates for four works, and three more are scheduled. The most recent was a 60-foot handsaw shipped own the Petaluma River and destined for Tokyo.

These were made of composite glass-fiber materials, rather than traditional bronze or aluminum, because artists are able to achieve softer, smoother curves and tremendous structural strength.

"We're taking materials to places they haven't been before," Kreysler said.

Such large projects can take Kreysler two years to complete and cost $300,000, a massive undertaking "for a little shop like ours," he said. "It's custom work, craftsmanship."

Often, he has no competition on bids, "but we still have to be reasonable to get the job….Every time we bid a big job, we're basically risking everything. If we're off 10 percent, that's it. If I was a hardcore businessman, I wouldn't do this. You can lose money as easily as make it, and we don't make a lot."

More than half of Kreysler's $2 million annual gross comes from Sculpture work, but the applications of the technology are numerous, he said.

Fiberglass is merely melted sand spun into fibers instead of sheets, as window glass is. When mixed with polyester resin, it becomes "super strong," said Kreysler, 50, who graduated from San Diego State with an English literature degree, then moved to San Rafael in 1972 for a job making fiberglass sailboats.

"It's strong, lightweight and durable. Most people don’t know fiberglass is a structural material….Bridges and minesweeper hulls are made of fiberglass. If you make a bridge out of it, it will last until you tear it down, grind it up and recycle it."

For the back and sides of the million-gallon tank at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the spectacular centerpiece of the new Outer Bay wing, Kreysler made fiberglass walls covered with glass tile to round off the corners, which prevents fish from injuring themselves.

But for the Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, Kreysler and his 20 employees–engineers, mathematicians, architects, "basically people who want to make things and work with their hands, who could have a desk job but don't want a desk job"–faced perhaps their most perplexing challenges.

Part of the hall's 1992 renovation included installation of 88 large reflective panels to improve sound quality, each different and formed of compound curves. To make sure all sound energy is reflected, acoustical standards dictated that the panels had to weigh 40 pounds per square foot, making each panel 9,000 pounds. The panels were originally designed to be concrete, but to install such massive structures, the stage would have had to be removed as well as the library on the floor below it, then a concrete foundation built in their place to support the crane.

Kreysler and Associates came up with an alternative: Use computer-controlled cutting tools to fashion hollow panels out of fiberglass, install them, then fill them with sand to achieve the required heft.

"That was 57 tons of beach sand," Kreysler said.

It was a year-long project for the company, but installation had to be done in 12 weeks, since the hall was reopening with a grand gala, Beethoven's Ninth performed on the ninth day of the ninth month, "so it was a drop-dead date. We had to convince them this tiny little shop could perform."

Apparently, they did, since the project led to a similar one for the Chicago Symphony and may lead to another for the Munich Opera House.

The firm also fashions architectural details for building renovations, including the three-story baroque façade on the historic Flood Building and Powell and Market streets in San Francisco. The company movie credits are legion: the raft Indiana Jones uses to escape the Temple of Doom, the walking tanks manned by Star Troopers in their losing forest battle against Ewoks in "Return of the Jedi," the Statue of Liberty that walks through downtown Manhattan to save the day in "Ghostbusters II."

These are whimsical, as are the dinosaurs built for amusement parks, as are the giant hamburger and Marilyn Monroe designed for a Japanese theme park, but they are nonetheless challenging, like all the projects, Kreysler said.

"None of the jobs are fun when you're in the middle of them," he said. "They're all complicated and terrifying and hair-raising. But when they're far enough behind you, you can pretend they were fun."

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Last updated: 09/21/06