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An artist who expresses himself through stencils
Saturday, October 16, 1999 By Marylynne Pitz, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Many artists know how to make an entrance. Christopher Mannich is more interested in painting, stenciling and glazing them.
Since the late '80s, he has been working his colorful magic in homes in New England and Western Pennsylvania, creating everything from stenciled curtains to a 16th-century-style frieze.
For nearly a year, he has been working his way through the foyer and up the stairs in the Murrysville home of James and Pat Sheehan. Inch by inch, Mannich has stenciled and painted gold and green pineapples in a foyer. Then, he painted and glazed a blazing ribbon of dark green, gold and Indian red up the staircase.
"It's a very comforting, bold statement, and I like to be bold," said Pat Sheehan.
Before settling on a stencil design that complements the Sheehans' collection of primitive antiques, Pat and the artist leafed through many magazines and books. Mannich also spent hours at the home, just absorbing its atmosphere.
"You must stand in the room to feel it. It's just getting a sense of the character of the house, the mood that the owner wants to create. Some of them have no idea; some of them do," Mannich said.
A native of Lower Burrell, Mannich received no formal art training but began drawing at age 5 and painting at age 6.
"I'd be in the house painting pictures when everyone else was out playing on summer evenings," he recalled.
Like his heroes, 19th-century New England artists Rufus Porter and Moses Eaton Sr., Mannich's life is itinerant, although he maintains a home in the Mexican War Streets of the city's North Side.
As a boy, Mannich often looked at picture books of New England and longed to go there. Some of the region's early American homes contain fine examples of stenciling, but the art form goes back much further. The earliest stencils, of humans and animals, have been found in French caves and date to the Paleolithic period. Early Chinese artists created stencils and Australian aborigines were using ocher pigment to stencil detailed human shapes in the first century A.D.
The simple designs that came over to the colonies with English settlers were refined in the Victorian age. Some of Mannich's stencils are inspired by Victorian originals, but they always have a bit of him in them. Mannich says he draws inspiration from nature, wallpaper, quilts, the music of Tchaikovsky -- and his imagination.
"You always have to interpret. You have to add. You have to subtract. You have to remember that you are doing a stencil and that it can be tricky if you are working with overlays," he said, referring to the repetitive, painstaking process that lends depth to a design.
In the Sheehans' home, Mannich initially sketched the gold and green pineapples in the foyer with paint, then went over each one seven or eight times. Later, he added the swirling red ribbons.
The staircase came next.
"He would do half the steps at a time," Pat recalled.
When Mannich began painting and glazing the staircase, he used post-it notes to create a line of demarcation so the Sheehans and their teen-age son knew where they could step. A walk up or down the staircase became an especially tricky version of that old game "Twister."
Mannich lived in New England for much of the 1980s, eventually getting to meet one of his favorite artists, Andrew Wyeth.
"The light will never touch an object exactly the same way again. The atmosphere itself is always changing. That's why I like Wyeth paintings, because he really does catch the light," Mannich said.
While in Cushing, Maine, Mannich befriended Wyeth and his wife, Betsy. In 1989, Mannich stenciled in every room in the Wyeths' home. He also designed and stenciled a floral pattern on curtains for Mrs. Wyeth, which he called Betsy's Choice. As Mannich hung the curtains, Andrew Wyeth stood outside the window, clowning and making faces.
While living in New England, Mannich ran a bed and breakfast called the Maine Rooms. He also befriended Tom and Bonnie Sawyer, owners of The Breakwater, a 39-room English Tudor bed and breakfast on Frenchman's Bay in Bar Harbor.
The couple hired him to decorate The Breakwater's grand hall. Mannich painted an elaborate, 16th-century-style frieze featuring as focal points a gold medallion, ascending angels and a suit of armor.
Mannich also stenciled in the New England home of Stanley Marcus, one of the owners of the Nieman-Marcus department stores.
During his career, Mannich has worked with various methods, pigments and tools. Instead of stencil paper, he cuts his designs in acetate because it is stronger and holds the paint better.
"I never follow a book as far as technique. Sable brushes are best because of the way that they hold the paint. Badger brushes are good for stippling or blending of glazes. I have my own glazing formulas that I have developed myself," Mannich said.
He generally has several projects going at once. Each week, he travels between projects underway in Lower Burrell and Ligonier, Westmoreland County. At the Sheehan's Murrysville home, he still plans to paint a mural and stencil in the second-floor hallway. Pat Sheehan delights in the beauty that the muscular young artist creates.
"I like an eclectic look ... nothing perfect, nothing formal," said Pat, an Army brat who says she has "lived in castles and igloos and army barracks and flea-bitten French hotels."
The cost of Mannich's work varies with the complexity of the project; it can range from a few hundred dollars for a painted fireplace screen to $1,000 for an entire room.
Mannich, who spent two years at a Jesuit seminary in Cincinnati, finds an element of spirituality in his work.
"I think God gives everyone a certain talent."
Before he begins to work on a room, Mannich said, "I make a sign of the cross and say a prayer and I get taken away and it works."
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