Fresco in Wimberley, who knew?

This is one thing that will give puzzling looks to even long time residents. Did you know that there is an actual fresco in Wimberley, right off the Square? Seriously, but it wasn’t imported from Spain, Italy, Mexico or even Albuquerque.

But on the rear of Calley’s Jewelry on Old Kyle Road, sort of catty-corner to the Martha Knies Community Park, it is right there staring you in the face. At first, someone might think it’s another of the many beautiful murals around town. But this is much, much more.

The artist Frederico Vigil is once removed from Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo and their fresco paintings. In 1984, their interns and students of the art Lucienne Bloch and Stephen Pope Dimitroff, now aged in their 80s, wanted to impart their knowledge of creating frescoes before the 5,000 year art was lost.

Vigil answered the call for a public search in Albuquerque, New Mexico for interested students and theartist became their intern. Vigil is currently working on the largest fresco in the world in Albuquerque.

Frescoes are known to exist in ancient Minoa in the Aegean Sea, from around 2000 B.C. and the Bronze Age and from ancient Egyptian tombs. The colors of the frescoes are still brilliant all these ages later.

Vigil and a local couple, Les and Lisa Crane, became friends, exchanging houses for a number of years. At the time, the Crane family owned the old gas station that became Los Olivos/Calley’s Jewelry. The couple had just recently sold the building.

The fresco is of the time the station was operating with a normal, everyday auto repair gas station business back in 1978, when the gas station had a mechanic on duty. The fellow who is working in the fresco was the manager of the station at the time.

“The theory is it is some lady from Houston needed her car repaired,” said Lisa. There are many personal things going on in the fresco, each member of the family’s birth dates, and it even included their dog at the time, “Sizzle.”

The fresco, or more correctly, buon fresco, is a painstaking, time-consuming effort. But the finished work is on a very durable medium, one that will last for ages.

The buon fresco commissioned by the Crane’s took, “two or three months,” according to Lisa. Vigil stayed with them during that period.

Buon frescoes involve using watercolors on a fresh, third layer, of five layers of plaster and paint also on the last two. The finished product is compassed of watercolors that permeate all the layers, leaving a more permanent impression of color on the plaster wall.

“He would do a square foot a day. He’d draw an outline (on paper) and punch holes for the color,” she said. The mural is right behind a fountain, giving the small area, right-off-the-square, an air of sophistication and culture.

Wimberley is a town full of surprises, and this one is classy, and worth a look, even for those who have lived here a while. Next time you’re in town and have a moment to take a breath, turn onto Old Kyle Road and park your car and stroll over and have a close look at the fresco. A little bit of heaven, I’d say.