Adventures in fiberglass

William Kreysler and Assoc., Inc. This article appeared in the San Francisco Examiner on October 27, 1996

ADVENTURES IN fiberglass
Designer serious about his work - including landmark renovations - but he also builds flying saucers

- By Donna Horowitz, Special to the Examiner

PETALUMA - In art and architecture - not to mention product design, customer service and advertising - it's often the little things that get noticed first. Such is the case with William Kreysler's work. The difference is, his "little things" include giant dinosaurs, sundaes and hamburgers.

Working mostly with fiberglass, Kreysler has built an impressive resume of major projects - from rebuilt historical building facades to the acoustical renovation of Davies Symphony Hall. But the work most people talk about is the statues: the giant dinosaur that guards a store along Interstate 80, huge sculptures of fast food and '50s icons at a Japanese theme park, and controversial polyurethane Indians that stand outside Cigarettes Cheaper stores. "If you're going to have something unusual and strange anywhere in the world, you're going to get a quote from Mr. Kreysler," said Ned Roscoe, president of the Cheaper discount grocery store chain, based in Benicia.

His low-key operation in Petaluma, William Kreysler & Associates Inc., has designed and built projects for individual and corporate clients around the world. The 13-year-old business employs 18 and brings in $2 million a year in revenue. "I think when it comes to fiberglass, nobody can touch him. If you want craftsmanship, you go to Bill," said Peter Wong of ED-2 International, a large architectural planning and interior-design firm in San Francisco.

Working with his hands is nothing new for Kreysler, a 48-year-old San Rafael resident who learned to work with bronze and cast molds as a boy of 13. "All my life I made things," he said. "I worked for my godfather in his foundry." After graduating from San Diego State University with a degree in English literature in 1970, he began working for a fellow sailboat crew member at his now-defunct San Rafael business that crafted almost 15,000 fiberglass sailboats in 10 years.

The Flood family contacted Kreysler when it decided to restore the historic Flood Building, built two years before the 1906 earthquake, at the corner of Market and Powell streets. Much of the lower portion of the stone façade - including hand-carved arches, cornices, and balconies - had been destroyed in a 1952 modernization project by the Woolworth Co., a tenant that put a metal front on the building.

Architectural Drawings

Kreysler worked from old architectural drawings and took molds of existing building ornaments. He used polymer concrete to resemble stone and reinforced it with fiberglass to create a three-story façade that resembles the original baroque-Renaissance style sandstone. "It looks perfect. It was a very special job," said Flood Co. president James C. Flood, whose grandfather built the building. "We've gotten a number of architectural awards. Bill's part was the key."

Kreysler's projects also draw praise from such competition as Charles Wittman, president of New York ornamentation manufacturer Architectural Fiberglass Corp. "I've seen his work, and it's marvelous," Wittman said. "He's done some stuff and it's beyond belief."

The success of another project - the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall renovation - required even more such Kreysler creativity.

'Oddball spheres'

He was asked to construct massive wall panels to improve the building's acoustics, and in 1991, a design was created to reshape the 60- to 70-foot walls with rounded bottoms and compound curves - sort of "oddball spheres," recalled John Kieser, director of operations for the San Francisco Symphony. "We couldn't figure out how to do it without Kreysler," he said.

To work correctly, the panels needed to be dense like concrete, but installing concrete slabs would require removing the roof, Kieser said. Kreysler's solution: Make relatively light fiberglass panels, hoist them into place with stage equipment, then fill them with 50 tons of sand. "It was a brilliant way to add weight," Kieser said.

Kieser said acoustical renovations generally aren't successful, but this one - finished on time and under budget in 1992 - was. "The audience noticed a dramatic difference. They feel like they're much more connected to the orchestra.," he said.

Other Kreysler projects include the large bas relief California seal on the state building at Van Ness and McCallister in San Francisco and an 8,000-square-foot fiberglass tank for the Monterey Bay Aquarium. He also created a walking tank for one of George Lucas' "Star Wars" films and put together a whimsical upside-down collar and tie sculpture by premier pop artist Claes Oldenburg. The sculpture is displayed in front of a bank in Germany.

"I think he's very unusual because he takes on very difficult problems and solves them quite cleverly," said Dean Weldon, president of Academy Studios-Division of WGM in Novato, another Kreysler competitor that designs and builds museum exhibits. "I'd say he has a very good reputation in the field. He's primarily known for unusual projects."

Those include the 75-foot dinosaur he designed and built for the Roscoe family's Cheaper market on Interstate 80 in Dixon. Dixie the dinosaur created such a sensation after it was installed two years ago that Caltrans trimmed the bushes in the median to let passing motorists see it better without straining their necks and risking accidents, Roscoe said. He said the dinosaur, ferried to the store by helicopter, also made a deep impression on his then-1-year-old son, Evan, whose first word was "Dixie."

Kreysler is creating another fantasy sculpture for the family, a flying saucer designed by his wife, Jacque Giuffre. The gigantic creation - resembling a spaceship that crashed - will be jutting out of the roof and partly inside the family's store in Lathrop.

Surprised at reaction

As often happens with public artwork, some of Kreysler's creations have generated controversy. The Roscoe family recently received a handful of complaints from Bay Area Native Americans about statues of American Indians in front of Cigarettes Cheaper stores. Kreysler was surprised by the reaction, saying "we were asked to do something that was respectful…. The last thing we want to do is show disrespect to our fellow human beings."

But Kreysler's work for a rock 'n' roll theme park in Japan - giant sundaes, a hamburger, a juke box archway over the entrance, a gas man resembling the Texaco man, cars and '50s idols Marilyn Monroe, Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly - has only won high marks. "We could not have pulled off the theme without Bill. It's one thing to conceptualize a good idea. It's another to create it," said Wong of ED-2 International.

Intriguing process

Kreysler's manufacturing process is almost as intriguing as the results it achieves. He said his company invented a process that allows his workers to take a three-dimensional picture of a small scale model of the sculpture using a computerized laser beam that works something like a CAT scan. The image is then fed into a large computer-controlled milling machine that carves a large version of the sculpture. "I think our techniques are unique in the industry," Kreysler said. "I know of no one who uses computer imaging and machining on the scale we use it. We have brought a whole new kind of technique to an age-old art."

It takes a few days for a 7-foot sculpture to emerge from the machine and several weeks for a 50-foot sculpture to be finished. The process removes much of the tedium and time need to carve the sculptures by hand. "We feel like the future is in this technology. We can bring sculpture back into architecture," Kreysler said. "If you look at architecture from 100 years ago, it was full of sculpture. If you look at architecture today, it's flat."

He said the reason is that it has been costly to carve ornamentation for buildings until now. "It takes a true visionary to break out of tradition," Kreysler said. "We're waiting for an architect with a vision of where he'd like architecture to go to use this technology."

Or perhaps an architect who wants a 75-foot dinosaur on top of his building.

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Last updated: 09/21/06