Elaborate murals a decades-old Lodi Grape Festival tradition
Large, red, pink and black table grapes. Small, pale green and purple wine grapes. Raisins — brown, golden, and covered in yogurt and chocolate.
With these materials, plus a little foil and rubber cement, teams of grape mural builders are creating incredible works of art for the Lodi Grape Festival this weekend.
The Ole Mettler Grape Pavilion was abuzz with activity on Monday. Crews of volunteers and workers were setting up historical and agricultural displays. Sheets of plastic covered the pavilion’s wooden floors to protect them them from glue, grapes and paint.
Buckets and boxes full of grapes were stacks on one end of the pavilion, ranging from table grapes like flame tokays and black princes to wine grape donations from local vineyards.
Along the giant room’s edges, the grape murals were coming together in pieces on a series of card tables. Fans were going strong to dry rubber cement and blow the fumes away.
Harold Rohrbach was seated at one table, carefully snipping grapes free from the bunch with a small pair of scissors. Leaving a tiny bit of the stem in place means the grapes last longer.
“Otherwise, they won’t hold up that well,” he said.
In the old days, the grape muralists said, women would poke hat pins through the base of each mural, then carefully stab each berry onto the pin. By the end of the festival, they were raisins or rotting.
Now, Rohrbach and other volunteers prepare the grapes, making sure berries with split skins, bruises or other blemishes are discarded.
Late Monday morning, he was still snipping grapes free as other volunteers were beginning to glue each piece of fruit into the mural frames.
••• Before heading over to see for myself, I knew creating the grape murals took a lot of work. On Monday, I wanted to get a taste of it for myself.
Jean Rauser, who is on the festival board and organizes the 4-H teams who put together the murals each year, graciously allowed me to give it a try. After taking me on a mini-tour of the stations she and her fellow artists had set up, she put me to work with another volunteer.
“It can be monotonous,” she warned.
Using rubber cement, we glued pale green grapes into one section of a mural portraying Lodi’s iconic mission arch. I got into a routine — make sure the rubber cement in the area I was filling was tacky, then dip each grape into a little more cement before placing it. Stop every couple of rows to make sure the grapes were positioned closely enough.
After several minutes of gluing and chatting, I paused to check my progress.
I’d only filled about three inches of the two-inch-byone-foot section.
••• Each of the grape murals — including the arch — is put together in four or five sections. Otherwise, the mural would weigh too much to be carried to the display area. Each section alone weighs about 100 pounds, Rauser said.
“You don’t want them to break,” she said.
Each mural starts out as a sketch or a photo.
“We go from a drawing that is eight inches by 12 inches,” Rauser said.
Then, they use a projector to blow the image up to 8-by12 feet.
The arch mural was based on an antique photo Rauser found of preparations for the Tokay Carnival. The carnival was held for one year only, in 1907, but it was one of the inspirations for the first Lodi Grape Festival in 1934.
In the photo, Lodi’s mission-style arch frames the wooden arch created expressly for the Tokay Carnival, which had two small theaters in each leg and a bandstand in the center.
A second mural, designed by Rauser’s daughter, shares “snapshots” of iconic Grape Festival sights, like folklorico dancers, the carousel and Zippy the clown.
Omega Nu volunteers had designed their own piece of art, celebrating the Golden Gate Bridge — which, like the festival, turns 80 this year.
All of the murals’ frames are made with builder board and cardboard covered in foil. Aside from that, wooden faces, and the occasional spray of paint (gold, silver and white only) or glitter, the muralists use nothing but grapes — though sometimes people think they use marbles, Rauser said.
“They’re always all grapes,” she said. “We don’t use any fake things.”
Some past designs included trees or grapevines where the artists wanted a bark-like texture, volunteer Jean Devine said. They had to be careful how they created the effect, because only a small percentage of the mural is allowed to have non-grape-related items.
“If you had to have wood, we used the bark from the vine,” she said.
She and Pam Focacci worked on a second section of the arch mural, quickly and firmly placing grapes in tight-packed rows.
Each of the volunteers placing grapes acts as a second line of defense, making sure the fruit is somewhat uniform in size and color.
“You’re too big, you’ve got to go home,” Julie Pilcher told one of her grapes with a laugh on Monday. “This stuff is so intricate.”
A coating of vegetable oil makes some of the grapes stand out. Others that have grown shiny due to handling are sprayed with baby powder-based aerosol deodorant, to restore the “bloom” — the slightly dusty look grapes have fresh off the vine.
(Every year, people get spotted trying to eat grapes off the murals, Rauser said. Between the rubber cement, paint and deodorant, the grapes are not safe to eat.)
Other items like cinnamon or nutmeg might be used to bring out certain colors.
Sometimes, people think the murals are treated and stored so they can be used in future years, but the grapes don’t last that long, Rauser said.
Each year, they are made new by the 4-H volunteers, along with groups like Omega Nu and the FFA.
••• I enjoy tedious chores, but by the time I finished up my very small section of the arch mural, I had some healthy respect for the grape muralists.
The two-inch section, about a foot long, took me more than half an hour to complete. By the end, my fingertips were tacky with rubber cement. The grapes slide and roll as you place them, which makes it hard to tuck the stems out of sight.
Each grape is a careful selection process — you want it to be the right size and shape, not too soft, not scarred or bruised or pitted. A few of the volunteers had stools, but others stood for the work.
The volunteers — most with decades of experience — were much faster than I was, chatting as they worked. They were also better at not rubbing off the “bloom” as they placed each grape.
Still, I was feeling pretty proud of myself when I finished my small section. It was slow going, and Rauser was right, it was monotonous. But it was relaxing at the same time, and when I was finished, it was one more small section ready for the festival.
If “quality control” doesn’t have to redo it, anyway!
••• Most of the volunteers working on the murals Monday have been doing it since they were children.
Katie Huipe, Jean Rauser’s daughter, has been tagging along with her mom since she was young. Her own young daughter came to watch on Monday afternoon when school let out.
Jean Rauser, too, followed in her mother’s footsteps.
Pilcher, who was working on the Omega Nu mural, is the granddaughter of Marie Graffigna, the festival’s first Grape Queen in 1934. Her compatriot Janie Williams has been working on the Omega Nu mural since childhood, and her sister was a princess.
The volunteers are doing extra work to ensure that the tradition survives. Rauser has even turned to growing her own grapes for the murals. Local wineries donate a lot, but they don’t have the variety of colors and sizes needed to create truly elaborate artwork.
“People are getting rid of their table grapes,” she said.
She grows 135 vines of flame tokays, black princes and other table grapes just for the murals.
The pavilion used to house dozens of grape murals. Now, though the grape murals are still the centerpiece, commodity murals using other crops and products from San Joaquin County have taken over part of the show.
Still, on Monday evening, the volunteers were all set to pass on their art to dozens of students in local 4-H clubs, who would come to help wrap up.
“It’s cool to keep up a tradition like this,” Pilcher said.
“They’re always all grapes. We don’t use any fake things.” JEAN RAUSER LODI GRAPE FESTIVAL BOARD MEMBER