The organizers of the Delray Beach International Tennis Championships love to push the marketing envelope. Sometimes, us fans end up with fashion anthrax; other times, we end up with a love letter, S.W.A.K.
We swooned after seeing photos of the tourney’s show court backdrop; the blue waves were the brainchild of ITC director John Butler. He partnered with Mr. and Mrs. Jerry Hall, who underwrote the fee of trio of artists involved with the project: Doug Hoekzema of Pompano Beach and Angel Mir and Brandon Opalka of Miami.
The waves were digitally designed and printed on vinyl. They then beefed up the mural with airbrushing and painting by hand.
On the court, extending out from the end zone walls from six to ten feet, the artists painted waves directly on the surface. (Take that, Zurich!) The court took three days to prep another three days to paint.
More: See more close-ups of the mural after the cut…
RELATED POSTS
>> before and after: melbourne park’s new logo
>> the red (and white) courts of basel
>> i love umlauts!
Stumble ItTags: delray beach
February 19, 2008 at 10:34 pm |
LOVE IT! I wish Doha would do something like that….oh wait, they couldn’t even figure out how to work the live score program…
February 20, 2008 at 4:26 am |
I was there for three days straight and never even noticed the waves.
February 20, 2008 at 10:11 am |
The background was nice, but what would have been nicer would have been some contrast between the blue court and the out-of-bounds area. I don’t understand these tournaments — the Aussie open for one — that don’t use contrasting colors. It makes a real difference for those of us watching on TV.
February 20, 2008 at 12:03 pm |
myob: I agree. But let’s cut them some slack. They’re light years ahead of the tourneys that choose to do nothing. Also, they need to keep the contrast (and the colors) subdued for the backdrop so they don’t distract play.
February 28, 2008 at 8:58 am |
I agree that this is a GREAT way to spice up TV tennis and the sport in general. You can’t argue with that last shot especially! It’s beautiful.
February 28, 2008 at 11:45 pm |
that’s freakin awesome.
March 4, 2008 at 8:38 am |
John Butler here. Seeing this kind of feedback makes me incredibly proud that we could debut this kind of innovation here in Delray Beach. Thank you. Regarding the “contrast”, surely something we and the artists would love to explore, but we have certain rules to abide by as directed by ATP (Erwin, your comments were right on target). Important to give ATP a lot of credit for working with us through the process and letting us take the strides we did. And Doug, Angel and Brandon, and the Hall family, not enough can be said about them jumping on board with the idea and taking it to another level. Next year…we’ll embellish even further.
March 10, 2008 at 7:40 am |
The murals came out great..mixed media at its finest…
the masses couldnt get anything better than some art and culture in their tennis..and done in this millenium to boot…well done hox and crew..
what other tourneys or sports associations, for that matter, will also be stepping up??????
December 20, 2008 at 3:58 pm |
I like the waves but it seems to me that it was pretty much stolen from the famous painting “The Great Wave” by Hokusai. They simply inverted it removed the boats and made slight changes. Or was it intentionally fashioned after the painting? Like the mural is a tribute to various pieces of art.