Whimsical watercolor by Dan Thomas illustrates how he’d change the look of the U.S. Bank branch in San Anselmo. Photo by Woody Weingarten.
- The real U.S. Bank building in San Anselmo — inspiration for Dan Thomas’ whimsy. Photo by Woody Weingarten.
- Dan Thomas holds one of his fanciful ideas on how to re-face U.S. Bank branch. Photo by Woody Weingarten.
- Watercolor sketches represent Dan Thomas’ fanciful look at U.S. Bank branch. Photo by Woody Weingarten.
Can you imagine the front of the four-story U.S. Bank building in downtown San Anselmo as an oversized fish tank?
Dan Thomas can.
And he’s done something about it.
But it’s taken him 40 years to scratch his inner itch about the structure, to shrink his edifice complex.
His weaponry? Watercolors.
And whimsy.
It happened last month, when Dan, my longtime next-door neighbor in San Anselmo, painted “a series of fantasies conceptualizing how the bank branch might improve its look.”
Until then, the high-rise — by town standards, at least — merely aggravated Dan every time he passed it.
His problem?
“The building, which was constructed in 1962, didn’t fit the surrounding environment.”
Dan sits at my dining room table displaying his watercolor sketches. And jabbering like he’s stumbled onto a second childhood.
“Just before I drew the first parody, the fish tank,” he says, “I thought, ‘Let’s see if I can have some fun.’
“Then, for a second I thought maybe I and the bank could be playful. Maybe the bank would let me decorate it for a couple of months. But then I decided the bankers, a serious lot, would be unlikely to see the humor in it.
“All of this, of course, is strictly in my head — it’s all make-believe. I haven’t approached U.S. Bank at all. I have no real plan to ask the bank to change anything.”
The sketches, Dan tells me with mischievous twinkles in both blue eyes, involve “humor, what-if’s and a play of colors.”
The bank’s window treatment, explains the retired architect, “is six-inch thick concrete, 16 feet wide, 32 feet high, two feet deep. The top and bottom segments form a complete circle. There are eight circles over all. I used to visualize that the only thing that would [help] would be to make window treatments with fish tanks with live fish. The idea stayed with me. So I finally sketched it, to scale, as if it were an architectural rendering.”
His initial plan was only to do that one concept, but he became so motivated he concocted a dozen fanciful sketches in only two weeks.
“My idea was to give the Town Council a humorous view of the building — as a cautionary tale — to remind them you can’t turn back once you’ve made a decision. Had the council gone ahead with its original General Plan, the town would have had 10-story buildings.”
I almost choke on the thought.
I like San Anselmo for what it is, a quaint, little town despite being a refuge for coffee buffs, boutique shoppers and upscale bicyclists.
Noticing my discomfort, Dan placates me — grinning.
“Again, remember this is make-believe, even though a real fish tank actually could be built with Plexiglas and a little bit of cork.”
Once he’d retired, Dan returned to an early love — painting. He worked mainly on landscapes, but now again dabbles in abstracts. He’s good enough to have won prizes, including firsts, at Marin and Napa county fairs — as well as Marin Society of Artists juried shows in Ross.
Now 79, he remembers once painting “full time, mostly allegorical paintings, working my way through my religious upbringing as a strict Pentecostal.”
That, of course, is miles from imagining fish in windows at the 46-feet, 6-inch high site, where for years I’ve banked in the tallest building in town.
One of Dan’s watercolors is tied to “the good economic times” we’re experiencing anew, featuring “drinks on the house — cocktail glasses filled to the brim.”
In another, a series of sunglasses symbolize “warm periods — sunny days.”
Soup cans also became a happy construct. Although the Andy Warhol tribute might allude to soup lines, the artist says he intended to evoke “a ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’ feeling.”
One striking piece is a light-hearted plea for egalitarianism. Faces become a commercial for both bank and tolerance.
“It means, ‘We serve all nationalities,’” Dan says.
Taken as a whole, the sketches comprise his “first attempt at humor in art — I’m a pretty serious character in a lot of ways — although these may have loosened me up a bit.
“I’m working on one right now where I’m putting a hand-painted silk tie right in the middle of an abstract painting that looks like a vest.”
I postulate he’s now in-vested in projecting a less-serious attitude.
Contact Woody Weingarten at voodee@sbcglobal.net or http://vitalitypress.com
