(MCT) WATERLOO, Iowa—Paco is down to his last prophet. He stands on a scaffold surveying the image of Joel, and the few unpainted blotches left on a 2,511-square-foot ceiling.
He pulls a paint-spray respirator over his goatee and shakes an aerosol can, the metal ball inside rattling noisily. He leans back and begins to spray brown paint in quick strokes of his left hand on the plaster ceiling.
The details emerge on a pair of cherubs supporting a decorative column beside Joel. They are the last flourishes of a massive undertaking: a replica of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, one of art history’s most remarkable feats.
And here it is in downtown Waterloo, Iowa. The river here is not Tiber, but the Cedar. The artist is not Michelangelo, but Paco Rosic, a refugee of the Bosnian war. The medium is spray paint. But the likeness to the Renaissance original is striking.
Rosic began the painting in July in a historic building that his family is converting to a restaurant and gallery. After studying Michelangelo’s work, Rosic laid down a foundation of almond-colored spray paint and tried not to think what he was getting himself into.
“If you think too much, you’re going to kill your head,” he said. “I just started doing it. Then, every once in a while, I would stop and look and think, ‘Oh wow!’”
Curious onlookers stopped by as Rosic put in 10- to 15-hour days spray-painting the ceiling amidst the noisy hammers and drills of construction work.
At first Rosic lay on his back to spray the ceiling, but the extra scaffolding scratched the floor, so he switched to standing up and bending backward.
He stopped counting after he went through 2,000 cans of Krylon paint and spent more than $6,000 of his savings.
And in the next few weeks, he will finish it: nine Genesis stories, seven prophets and five sybils spread over 81 feet by 31 feet—almost the square footage of a tennis court.
“This is what I live for,” Rosic said. “Just to paint. Nothing else.”
Rosic was able to cover space quicker than Michelangelo could in fresco, a painting on fresh moist plaster. The spray paint also ends up brighter and less precise along the lines.
Rosic is a break dancer. And that ability put him on a path into his own Sistine Chapel that started when his mother showed him a photo of the ceiling as a child growing up in Sarajevo, Bosnia.
“I was so amazed,” he said. “I had this my whole life in my head. As I kept growing and growing, those images kept popping up in my head.”
When Yugoslavia broke apart in a vicious civil war that split along ethnic lines, his family fled. In Mannheim, Germany, he discovered hip-hop and learned to break dance.
Through dance parties, he met a graffiti artist nicknamed Paco. Around Mannheim, he began tagging—spraying his name illegally all over town, on walls, tunnels, trains.
In 1997, his family moved to Waterloo, where his aunt had come as a refugee from the war.
Rosic turned to his spray paint for solace, spending countless hours in his parents’ garage, elevating his ability from graffiti to a style he now calls abstract realistic.
When his parents decided to leave their grocery store jobs and start a restaurant of their own, Rosic saw his opportunity. The family bought a former antique shop with sizable ceiling space and Rosic visited Rome, sneaking photos of Michelangelo’s work.
Rosic said he has developed a new appreciation for what Michelangelo accomplished, physically and mentally, and hopes next to paint a kind of American version of the Sistine Chapel, using modern figures to depict biblical scenes on an even larger scale.
© 2006 Chicago Tribune
