Painting stirs imagination

Unsigned art created by a small South Tampa company with an unassuming name graces many area homes, restaurants and local schools as well as the Glazer Children's Museum and Central Florida's newest theme park, Legoland.

Splat Paint creations prove the small staff does much more than paint some neat work — all without splat.

Detailed murals, custom artistic finishes, decorative metal work, hand-embossed tiles, Venetian plaster, concrete sculptures, gold-leafing and more are on the company's creative palette.

"That's why we've been lucky in this economy — we do everything," said Jeff Monsein, founder of the South Tampa-based company.

Splat Paint works with the Tampa Bay area's major architects, builders, and landscapers; but in the past the creative team has worked in South Florida, Maryland, California, even Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

That Mexican project consumed three weeks and posed unique problems that arose early in the journey.

Unknown to Monsein, Transportation Security Administration agents at Tampa International Airport confiscated all the liquid tints he packed in a trunk of art supplies for the job south of the border.

The loss of the tinting for glaze in the 10-bedroom vacation mansion of a Tampa client left little choice but to seek higher-priced substitutes in the Mexican coastal resort.

"I'm using my best Spanglish possible to try and negotiate with the locals to get enough materials to get the job done," said Monsein, finally able to laugh at the perplexing predicament six years ago.

Most jobs are closer to Monsein's New Suburb Beautiful studio. The company created murals in the media center, cafeteria and teachers' lounge at South Tampa's Woodrow Wilson Middle School and did all murals at Glazer Children's Museum.

The team used 20,000 small pieces of tile to create a 7-foot-high pirate mosaic outside the museum entrance, part of the nonprofit artLOUD project to place more sculpture downtown. Splat's interactive colorful mosaic is designed so visitors can pose behind it — their faces poking through the appropriate openings atop the swashbucklers' bodies.

At Tampa General Hospital, Splat Paint's unique mural in the Jennifer Leigh Muma Neonatal Intensive Care Unit depicts children seemingly swimming along the 20-foot diameter ceiling.

"We painted the ceiling as if you were looking up through the ocean and saw children floating and playing in the water," Monsein said.

The mural extends to the floor via a large pillar painted like a tubular aquarium with a coral reef, colorful fish and more swimming children. The image of a curious young observer on the outside looking in completes the aquatic design.

Months before Legoland's October opening, the Splat team was working on an arcade building at the Polk County theme park, where they applied colored cement to create a look of old plaster and exposed wood.

"It was a really difficult job," working all day in full sun for two weeks, said Monsein. Additionally, the team was required to wear long pants, safety vests and hardhats in the 95-degree heat. "It was miserable."

Monsein was not always a suffering artist. For two decades he owned and operated employment agencies and trade schools in Tampa, all in the auto/diesel mechanics and truck-driver training field. When he sold the businesses he was retired — briefly. In 1990, he likes to say, he "traded diesels for easels," informing his wife, "I'm going to start painting."

He launched the one-man company by distributing door-hanger ads to 100 houses in his New Suburb Beautiful neighborhood. It triggered some jobs. "I had to learn very quickly," he concedes. "I had no art education whatsoever, but I'm pretty crazy about reading and practicing" constantly until able to do whatever the job requires, he said.

To help with the growing workload, two school-trained artists joined Monsein a half-dozen years ago, Kristen Alatorre and Timothy Innamorato. Other local artists help with large projects. Most jobs, including the third philanthropic project Splat recently completed at Alpha House Tampa, begin with the proposed design superimposed on a photo of the area where the design or mural will be painted. "It pretty much shows what you're going to get," Monsein said.

Usually the client has a theme in mind, "and we come up with a creative plan. Most of our clients give us some poetic license to create," Monsein said.

For the Alpha House patio walls, the team proposed a tropical theme and, following approval of a design of hibiscus and tropical leaves, created stencils to facilitate applying those images in colors selected by the client.

"We don't have a particular style," Monsein said. For example, a western-theme mural requested by a client will be unique, unrecognizable as a Splat Paint creation, he said.

The company itself was somewhat anonymous in its early days.

"Originally, there was no name, but I used the Splat logo," Monsein said. "My last name is totally not memorable," so he didn't want to identify the company that way. "Splat is really easy to spell and it's really memorable," he said.