Episode 43: James Bullough

James Bullough: A couple hours of like super nail-biting, anxious reality goes by, and finally we get the thing working. He takes us down to the ground, and I'm completely freaked out. Like super freaked out.

Josh Caldwell: Hello my atypical daydreamers, welcome to the podcast. Here we share stories about life on the road, when things get weird, and you must adapt. My guest today is James Bullough. He's an artist, painter, and muralist. He paints massive paintings on the sides of big buildings all around the world. It seems to me a lot of art is created in controlled environments. Writers have their desk, actors have their stage, potters have their wheel. Other artists, like James, must deal with all the elements. It's kind of wild west, and like any good western, the days are long, the townfolk can be sketchy, and there's just enough danger to keep things interesting.

James Bullough: The first time I ever painted on a swing stage. Normally when you paint murals, you paint from a cherry picker, this truck that's parked on the street with a long arm that booms out. But that only goes up to a certain level. If you're doing a bigger wall, or if there's a building under your building and you can't get to it, instead of coming up from the street, you come down from the roof on one of these window washer platforms. That's called a swing stage. The first time I ever used one was in Ukraine.

The project was super disorganized. A total clusterfuck, a complete mess. I showed up on the first day. None of my supplies were there. No paint. I waited like five days for all my materials to arrive, just sitting in a Ukraine hotel watching the entire Sopranos from start to finish. Then finally it arrives. I go out the night it arrives to get started. It's raining and it's dark and I've got this projector. I'm trying to get my sketch up on the wall. This is a 14-story building. It's raining. I was miserable. The projector wasn't bright enough but I was so frustrated. I just wanted to get started.

We finally get the projector lined up. I'm furious with the organizers. He's like, yeah, let's go up to the roof now, we'll get in the swing stage and come down. I go up on the roof and for the first time I see this contraption they want me to get into. It's the most jankiest thing I've ever seen. Rusted metal. I thought these things were clamped or screwed into the roof, but this is just bricks, like old bricks counterweighting the basket that I'm supposed to step into. And the basket's maybe four feet away from the building and down below the roof line. They're like, just jump in. I'm like, jump in? There's no harnesses, there's nothing. And they're like, this is how we do it in Ukraine.

James Bullough: The whole thing moves. You can't get away from the wall to see what you're painting. It takes twenty minutes just to go down to the street and have a look at what you've done. You don't get that chance. You just paint. You paint all day and hope that what you're doing is working. The rule in Ukraine was that I had to have a driver there. I wasn't allowed to drive the stage. So there was this dude just sitting next to me the whole time going up and down whenever I pointed. He didn't speak English, he didn't speak German. I'm not sure he spoke Ukrainian. This guy was rough.

So we're about a day into the project and I'm dying in the heat. We're blasted by sun the whole day. At some point I point up for him to go up and he starts going up, but only one half of the swing stage is going up and the other is standing still. The whole stage is turning into a slide. And I'm like, stop, stop, stop. Something's not right. He realized where he was sitting it was just going up so he thought everything was fine. I'm getting tilted. Then I realize the other motor isn't running. He didn't know that. So he stops, goes over to the other side. We're not at 45 degrees but maybe 30 degrees, which is uncomfortable, and we're six stories up off the ground.

This guy walks over to the other side, realizes the other motor wasn't spinning, but he doesn't know how to fix it. He's just the button guy, he's not a technician. So he starts pulling on the cable, yanking it. And remember, the top of this machine is just counterbalanced with bricks. There's nothing really holding us into the building. He's yanking it, hitting it with a screwdriver, and I'm screaming at him. No, stop whatever you're doing. We radioed down to the organizers. They sent a team out. But the problem is the machine is with us. Nobody can work on it because it's with us in the middle of the air. They're radioing to the guy trying to explain to him what to do.

A couple hours of super nail-biting, anxious reality goes by, and finally we get the thing working. He takes us down to the ground. And I'm completely freaked out. The organizers are like, okay, good, glad we fixed that. All right, are you ready to go back up? And I'm like, are you insane? There's no way I'm going back up. Definitely not with this guy. He almost pulled the whole thing down to the ground. I want a plane ticket. I'm out of here. This project's been a disaster from the beginning. I want to go home.

James Bullough: They kind of gave me a little bit of a mafioso threatening, like, you're not going anywhere until this job's done. And I also really wanted to finish. This was a big job for me. But I told him, and this is dead honest truth, the only way I'm going back up is if you and the mayor get in the machine, ride it all the way up to the roof, come back down, and show me that it's safe and that you feel comfortable with it. And by the way, tomorrow when I show up, I want a new driver and a new lift.

They promised. The mayor and the organizer went up. The mayor was in a suit. They were holding on to the railing, so nervous. They went up, they came down. I was like, all right, that's step one. Now I'm going home. I want a new driver and a new lift tomorrow. Of course I show up in the morning, same driver, same lift. But I was like, I'm here now. And I went up and I banged out this whole thing, got like an eight-day project done in three days because I was so nervous. I just scraped some and was like, I gotta get it done. Ended up being amazing. It's one of my landmark murals now and people love it. But the stuff you deal with in this job is kind of wild.

Josh Caldwell: Hey, it's Josh. Hope you're enjoying the podcast. And if so, are you wanting more road stories? Well, good news. I've got you covered. Consider becoming a patron. You'll have access to loads of great bonus stories that there just wasn't time for. And you'll be supporting a truly independent podcast. Find the link in the show notes and thanks. Now back to the show.

James Bullough: A job in Roanoke, Virginia, a couple years ago that I painted together with a good friend of mine, Owner, another artist from Switzerland. We collaborated on walls from time to time, and this was a massive project. Client was great, budget was good, everything was set up. But when we do these projects, a lot of the time you're painting in parts of town that are the less desirable parts of town. Murals are a part of a gentrification tool that cities use to kind of change areas or spruce up certain things. In this case we were actually painting in a very nice part of town. But when looking for accommodation, you have to be quite careful. We're gonna be here for two weeks. We want to be comfortable. We're gonna be painting all day, long hours. We need comfort in the evenings.

So my buddy and I are looking, and it's not a big city, so there are not a lot of Airbnb options. But we did find this one that was almost surprisingly too cool. It's a loft apartment above a concert venue. The concert venue is now closed, but the people that own this building run a festival, like a hippie Grateful Dead style festival in the mountains, every year. Hugely popular. And this Airbnb was the headquarters of the festival year-round when they were planning it. So it's all super hippie vibe inside. There was a pinball machine in the kitchen.

We're reading through the description and we did see that it said, yeah, be careful of the junkies around. There's some sketchy characters. It was difficult for us to get in and out of the place because there was always junkies on the stoop in front. And it was like, all right, this is something we're gonna have to pay attention to. But whatever, the place looked great.

James Bullough: And it was exactly as advertised. Amazing. Massive loft, ten-foot-high ceilings, two separate bedrooms. But my buddy's walls didn't go all the way to the ceiling. So it was this one big open space, huge couches. Very comfortable. The next morning we get up. First day of any project is usually half relaxed, half stressed. We've got plenty of time, but let's make sure all the pieces are in place. So we go down to the car. We had a rental car. We get in and he's looking up on his phone, how do we get to the wall? And I'm sitting in the passenger seat looking around.

This is the first time we're seeing the neighborhood because we got in late the night before. And I'm like, there's a few zombies walking around here. It's seven in the morning on a Tuesday. There's this guy walking towards me, maybe forty years old, obviously out of his mind. He's holding a box cutter and just slashing the bushes down the street as he walks by. And I'm like, we should get out of here. We'll do the phone stuff later. Let's move.

We go to the wall, meet the organizers, project's going well, everything's falling into place. We go home that evening, couple junkies but nothing big. Turn on the TV, have a couple beers. Day one accomplished. Day two, same thing. Wake up, see all the junkies, go to the wall. Paint all day, nine, ten hours. Come back to the loft, everything's fine. And we're exhausted. We're on the couch, having a couple beers, just winding down before bed. And my buddy's like, yo, did you see that? I said, what? He goes, I thought I just saw something shoot across the room. All right, fine. We just move on. And then he's like, did you hear that?

James Bullough: Like what? And then I do hear what's like a squeaking noise. Like an animal, squirrel or something. Is there a squirrel in the apartment? We could hear it. Then we kind of walked around and could tell it was in the ductwork. Because this is a loft, it's all exposed ductwork and metal pipes in the ceiling, and we can hear it through the vent. We couldn't locate it and eventually we went to sleep. But remember, my buddy's walls don't go all the way up to the ceiling. I'm in a room in the back, separated from the main area. So at some point in the middle of the night, he comes crashing into my room. He's like, yo, there's a bat in the apartment. It was flying around me. What? So we try to locate this bat. We don't see anything.

I'm like, do you want to come sleep with me in my bed? He's like six-five, this big Swiss guy. He's like, nah man, I'll just go to sleep. Night over. No more bats.

James Bullough: Wake up the next morning, go outside, junkie festival. There's these two guys walking towards us. A massive dude with a huge cast on his arm and a little squirrely guy, mumbling to each other and making eyes at us. We're like, let's get out of here, go to the wall. Paint all day, come home. Now we know we might have a bat situation. The night before we had opened the window hoping the bat would find its way out. Night three, same thing. Exhausted on the couch, drinking a beer. And this time we both see a bat, flying around. We can hear it. Sounds like there's probably more than one. We're trying to contact the owner of the property. I think there's a bat situation. But it's eleven, twelve o'clock. We've got to get to sleep and work the next day. Somehow we go to bed.

Night four, and it's full on. We know there's something going on. We're on the couch, we see a bat. Okay, it's not going away, we're gonna have to deal with this. We've got flashlights and brooms, walking all around. We can't find it. We're down on the floor shining the flashlight under the couch. And then all of a sudden, Owner sees it. It's on the floor. And bats aren't supposed to be on the floor. Either this guy has been stuck in the house for a few days and is exhausted, or he's sick. Something's not right with this bat. Neither of us wants to deal with a bat. What do you even do? Is this thing diseased?

So we managed to trap it in a trash can the size of a basketball and slid a plastic sheet under there. Now we've got a very aggravated bat in a trash can. I'm holding it. It's bouncing around, trying to fly. I'm freaking out. Owner's freaking out. And I'm like, dude, go open the door. Let's run outside and release this bat into the wild.

James Bullough: We run outside and it's exactly like we expected. The same two junkies from before, the massive giant with the cast, they're coming right for us. The little guy is screaming at us. Where are my M&Ms? Y'all stole my M&Ms. And I look at both of them. The best thing that could have happened, I confused them even more than they confused us. Because I'm like, I've got a bat in this trash can, we don't have time for you. And they were both like, whoa, you're weirder than we are. And they backed off. And I threw the trash can. The bat did not fly away. It just sort of hit the grass. And we were like, what do we do now? We gathered up the trash can, we ran back inside, and we were like, this was the craziest situation we've ever experienced.

Josh Caldwell: I want to thank James for sharing his experience. You can find all his work at jamesbullough.com. Also check out his podcast, Vantage Point Radio, where he chats with graffiti, urban, and contemporary artists. And find him on Instagram at james underscore bullough. And while you're at it, text this episode to the resident artist in your life. You know you got one. This podcast is created and produced by me, Josh Caldwell. Music by Visual Aid, my side music project. General support and copywriting by Miranda Caldwell. Thank you for listening, and I hope you come back next time.