Lincoln Maynard leads a double life as an artist and general manager of Scenic Technologies for PRG.
Adorning the walls of PRG’s Las Vegas offices are photographs of flashy sets from famous shows and concerts — the Billboard Music Awards, VH1 Rock Honors and Criss Angel: Believe, to name a few. They showcase decades worth of work on the Las Vegas Strip and across the country. Photographs of sets the company has built, however, aren’t the only works of art on display. They share the space with paintings by artist Lincoln Maynard, who also happens to be general manager of PRG Scenic Technologies.
Maynard’s artwork can be seen at local art galleries, corporations and collector’s homes across the country. His acrylic paintings, some on 8-by-10-foot canvases, combine line, form and texture in a modern, abstract style. “It’s linear, it’s conceptual, but it’s not an image,” he says. “I’m not trying to illustrate anything other than emotion.”
Used Drumheads
Actively involved in the Las Vegas entertainment scene for most of his life, Maynard’s love for show business is the inspiration behind his art, he says, notably his most recent series entitled “Rhythms of the Earth.” For this series, he integrates used drumheads from concert tours that otherwise would have been discarded into his paintings.
“Because, along with lighting, audio, and staging, PRG rents musical instruments, and because people who rent drums like new drumheads, they were discarding the used tops,” he says. “So, I picked up a few [drumheads] at first and used them to mix textures for my regular canvases. Then I found the beauty of them and integrated them into my art.”
Maynard said he knew the drumheads could be painted since rock ‘n’ roll drummers have been painting them before the days of The Beatles. What excites him about the series is that each performance-used drumhead has its own unique history, evident in the small dents, only noticeable up close, which bring character to the art. “All the residual energy is still there,” he says. “They've all been performed on; someone somewhere beat on that thing and rocked on.”
95 Percent Green
Because his materials would otherwise be discarded, Maynard’s art is “about 95 percent green,” he says. Along with drumheads, he uses stage floor coverings from various shows and concerts as a canvas. Some of his pieces, for example, are made from the used flooring from the set of the Billboard Music Awards. “I took it, patched up a few holes and had it cut so the drumheads fit in there perfectly. Even the sides are often recovered wood from scenery we’ve done.”
In addition, the wooden framing is constructed from small sections of formally unusable poplar wood, while the paints are made with mostly low VOC acrylics. The shellac coating, when used, is a renewable and LEED-compliant sealer.
He began the series with symmetrical placement of the drumheads and has since moved to off-center placement as well as varying forms. “You have three to four different places to work on the canvas, so you can incorporate that ‘earth-round rhythm’ into the rectangular or square shape, which goes back to that green theme,” he notes.
From Garage to Galleries
Maynard started selling his art more than a decade ago, thanks to a push from friends and family who convinced him that he should exhibit his art that had been piling up in his garage-turned-makeshift-studio.
Between 2003 and 2007 Maynard opened two galleries in the Las Vegas area — one in the suburbs and one in the heart of the older downtown Las Vegas “Arts District.” Both are now closed.
“They were beautiful galleries, but Las Vegas is a challenging town,” he says. “People don’t come here to buy art, and maybe it’s the transitory nature of the population, but there is not a strong base of community support for the arts. It’s just not a Mecca of art, although there are some great artists who live here.”
On his Web site, www.lmaynard.com, Maynard has put many paintings online, which has added to his collectors across the country. When asked if any famous rock ‘n’ rollers have purchased his paintings, Maynard doesn’t give too much away, simply stating, “I have created commission pieces for certain drummers who have asked me to do so from their old drumheads.”
His art has recently appeared at Gallery Las Vegas in downtown, and at the gallery of local rock sculpture artist Sharon Gainsburg, who is also a close friend. Maynard admits that he doesn't exhibit as much as he could, a result of the time he devotes to his other passion, his career building Scenery at PRG. He says, with no regret, “I would love to be in more galleries and exhibit more often, but I have to balance both parts of my life.”
Smitten by Show Biz
His career in entertainment began after graduating from UNLV in 1975 with bachelor’s degrees in both communications and history. He was about to pursue a master’s degree in communications when a friend, who was a stagehand on the Strip, suggested he work as a stagehand. He started, as most, with occasional calls such as working on stage at the New Frontier Hotel and Casino, which no longer exists.
“They might have been moving in someone like Bobby Gentry, a young Wayne Newton or Olivia Newton-John, but after that I fell right into it and put aside other paths that I was heading toward.” He describes that first experience in the industry as “magic” and said he never looked back, immersing himself in the business of show business, including the design and build of scenery.
Along the way, he worked for six years at The Mirage when it first opened for Siegfried and Roy, which debuted in 1990, and took on a variety of jobs including head rigger, head carpenter and eventually supervisor. He came to PRG in 1996 as head of the wood fabrication shop, transitioning to estimating, project management and then general manager.
Visions, on a Budget
“What we primarily do is work with designers to catch their vision,” Maynard says. “It can be a napkin sketch or a proper set of drawings. We look at them and put a price on it, which means you have to build the set in your mind.”
Some well-known projects that Maynard has been a part of include the VH1 Rock Honors Awards, VH1 Divas Live, the Billboard Music Awards, Criss Angel: Believe, and most recently, both venues for the Democratic National Convention produced by Ricky Kirshner and designed by Bruce Rodgers.
“Every show, big and small, the challenge is a) the set has to meet the designer’s vision, appealing to the audience and b) it has to be within the budget parameters and, of course, on time,” Maynard reports. “Whatever the challenge, it has to be resolved when the curtain goes up. And that curtain is going to open on time on opening night one way or another.”
A Centuries-Old Craft
Scenery and stages have been built since the times of Shakespeare, and part of Maynard’s love for building scenery is the history and tradition behind it. Despite how technology is evolving sets with vibrant video screens and LED lights, Maynard says his work in the scenery department still remains true to the centuries-old craft.
“We are still building scenery here, he says. “We still have counterweights, flats, curtains and all the other things that have been done for hundreds of years, and I still love it. It’s still a little bit of that ‘Mickey and Judy,’ where Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland in old movies would say, ‘You’ve got a barn; I’ve got four lights. Let’s put on a show.’”
Maynard credits the inspiration behind his art, in part to the career he chose years ago on a whim. He says that is the reason why he has yet to go to his studio and find the “inspiration well” dry.
“I think part of that is I still have such a driving love for this funky, old scenery business,” Maynard says with a smile. “It’s dual loves and I’m lucky I can do both.”
