This fall has been one nuts thing after another, and I feel like I’m holding on by the skin of my teeth. There are so many projects that have happened in the last few months, and I am backlogged with all the documentation that I haven’t had time to edit and post. But now, with a few days over the Christmas holidays, I finally have just a wee bit of time to get some things up.

So we’ll head back in time, all the way back to the beginning of October, which by now seems like a very far way away indeed.

One of the amazing things about my life is that I do contract work, which means that I’m often getting to do something completely different contract to contract. Although this lifestyle isn't the most secure, it's definitely interesting, and this October was no different. I headed out to Toronto where I had gotten a gig with HauntTO, a company that manufactures a different haunted house every year.

Although I’ve done lots of space design and specialty painting, a haunted house was definitely something new, and I was excited to try my hand creating a really different environment than I’m used to.

The space that we had to make the scene was a huge garage. Already full of stuff, the first job was to clear the space and make way for building in all of the different rooms and mazes that the public would run through.

The first space that we began to set up was the entry. The first thing that the attendees would see, we wanted the entry to feel like a creepy run down hotel. With the build crew throwing up some walls so we could begin, I started wallpapering and staining the surface of the space.

It was really fun to work on a scene where the aesthetic was dirty and grimy. Normally the type of work I do needs to appear really clean and pristine, and it was fun to use techniques that were shooting for the opposite.

Many of the objects and details we used in the space were rusted out things we had found in the garage. The real rust and run down aspect of them added the perfect feeling we were going for.

One of the great things about this project was that there was a full build crew employed to build the spaces that I needed to treat. That meant that by the time I was finished one space, there would be some new aspect ready to be created. I really enjoyed being able to focus only on the aesthetics of the projects, rather than on building walls and platforms.

At the back of the space a full elevated room was built. The space would be the final "scare," the place in the maze where the participants are ushered into the "monster's playroom," a creepy bedroom and torture chamber where the public would come face to face with the scary monster that had been chasing them through the maze.

The walls were wallpapered and spray painted to feel dingy and confining.

I cemented the floor so that the room would feel like a dark scary basement.

I had a lovely afternoon of smashing and dirtying children's toys that would be props for the playroom.

These went up on dirty and rusted shelves that had come from the original garage.

Tools and other rusted accoutrements were covered in dirt and fake blood and hung on the walls.

And all the while the awesome build crew kept making more walls and maze hallways.

Another one of the major "scare" rooms, was the "squish room". A small room that had a moveable wall that could squish the participants.

The participants would enter through a door that would close and lock behind them. Then the big wall would start to move towards them, pushed by the staff that was running the maze.

The wall would squish into people until, at the last minute, a hatch would open at the bottom of the wall that people could climb through and escape.

I wanted it to look like people had been squished in the room before, and so in order to get that effect, I filled a bunch of balloons with fake blood and tacked them to the wall.

One of the fun breaks for the build crew was when we stopped everyone on site to come push the squish wall and pop all the balloons so that they splattered against the wall.

It got an excellent effect, with the fake blood on the solid wall and the squish wall matching each other's splatters.

I continued to make props and effects, and the build crew continued to build, build, build.

So close to the end, with some of the last walls in the space going up.

True to old builders tradition, the build crew signed one of the last walls before I covered it in wallpaper. Everyone had worked so hard and created an amazing space in just a couple of weeks.

Some of the final touches, and my work on site comes to an end, leaving the builders to finish all the spaces that don't need an artist's touch.

A fun and unusual project! More pictures of the finished spaces to come.

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Haunt TO setup days

Art for the Spiritual Self!