There’s a saying that goes, “Do what
you love and the money will follow.” Most artists hope the adage is true, but it
neglects to mention the necessary elements to get a person from the beginning
of that statement to the end of it: talent, opportunity, and luck.

Michael DeLuca is one of the
fortunate who have been able to parlay their passion into their livelihood. The
Webster native makes his living as a muralist — people hire him to transform
their surroundings from bare walls into, say, an Italian cucina where the window looks out onto a vineyard, or the visions a
child might have while she sleeps.

Is it still self-expression if
someone is telling you what to do? After all, art is practically synonymous
with ego. “You have to drop that in a way,” admits DeLuca (pictured here
working on a Mediterranean balcony in a Webster home). He says his clients make
suggestions, but they’re also looking for his guidance, so he’s allowed much
freedom. For one Rochester home, DeLuca did a great deal of research into
hieroglyphics and spent five months depicting an intricate story about a
pharaoh’s journey into the afterlife over the course of four walls.

Being a muralist can be grueling
work. Rather than sitting in front of a manageable canvas with a neat palette
and jauntily placed beret, DeLuca often finds himself laying down broad strokes
from uncomfortable positions. But that’s the kind of exhausting commitment that
enabled visitors at the recent Homearama show to look up and see a ceiling
painted to resemble a cloud-dappled sky instead of the usual boring white.

When DeLuca isn’t tricking people’s
eyes on a massive scale, he can also be found doing the installation thing. His
work is now on display at the Bug Jar, and his next show is scheduled for the
Oxford Gallery. DeLuca’s future plans include illustrating books for children
and possibly some conceptual design for the movies, evolution being the
hallmark of any decent artist… I mean human being.

Visit
Mike DeLuca’s website at www.homepage.mac.com/murality.

— Dayna Papaleo

Wilmot?
Will not.

Plenty
of people hold press conferences or call reporters to announce a run for public
office. In Rochester, it’s apparently becoming fashionable to seek out press
attention for not running.

Early
last month school board president Darryl Porter called a press conference in
sub-freezing weather to say he was abandoning his mayoral ambitions. Then last
week, term-limited Republican County
Legislator Chris Wilmot called reporters around town and sent out a press
release saying he’d decided not to run
for mayor.

Wilmot’s
switch from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party in December had stoked
speculation that he might be planning such a run (and switching parties to
avoid a primary in a heavily Democratic town). Wilmot did little to dispel that
speculation until now.

“I
guess this proves once and for all that I certainly didn’t switch from Democrat
to Republican to run for mayor of Rochester,” he said in a press release.

That
press release cited “exciting business opportunities” for his company Endless
Wave Productions as his primary motive for backing off the mayoral race. Among
other things, Endless Wave owns interest in a casino company, a motion picture,
and is working on what Wilmot will only describe as “a suburban real estate
development that I hope to be cluing the public in on in the near future” for
fear of jeopardizing an impending deal.

An
alternative explanation is that he didn’t earn the nod from county GOP boss
Steve Minarik, who has a reputation for imposing strict discipline on his party
members lest infighting spill out into public view as it might in a primary.
Attorney John Parinello has also expressed interest in running for Rochester
mayor on the Republican line, and even attended a public forum for mayoral
hopefuls at City Hall last month.

Consider
what Wilmot told City Newspaper after
he switched parties in December about a possible mayoral bid:

“I
can guarantee this: I will not primary any Republican for mayor. I won’t enter
as a dark horse or as a renegade. And if I’m the selected candidate, I won’t
anticipate any primary if I’m the Republican nominee. That’s something I think
the Republican Party usually does a little differently.”

But
Wilmot dismisses that explanation, saying the decision was his own. As for
other Republican mayoral candidates: “I’m not aware of anyone at the moment,”
he says. “There’s no one apparent.”

Wilmot
adds that he hasn’t closed the door on future political ambitions.

“I’m
43 years old; I’m not over the hill in life or in politics,” he says. A former
Capitol Hill staffer, he says he’s always nurtured dreams of returning as a
congressman.

—
Krestia DeGeorge

More
than one way

Parking’s
the latest target of the Center City
Task Force, with studies now underway to potentially free up 100 short-term
on-street spaces downtown.

But
the Task Force’s more long-term inquiries into downtown’s traffic pattern — mainly its one-way streets — could
have an enormous impact.

“This
will be part of the Renaissance Square study,” says City Councilman Bill
Pritchard, who chairs the CCTF. “Renaissance Square is going to have such a
huge effect on traffic patterns, so we want to get the discussion of changing
some of these streets going now. I’m pushing hard for St Paul from Main on
north to the Inner Loop to turn back into a two-way street.”

One
of the primary objections many community members have had to the location of a
bus terminal at Renaissance Square is with the additional meandering buses
would have to do to navigate one-way streets as they enter and exit the
terminal.

“I’m
hopeful there may actually be a solution where we can mitigate some of the
disruptive parts of the previously proposed inflows and outflows at the bus
terminal by changing these streets to two-way streets,” Pritchard says. “I had
a conversation with [Renaissance Square Corp. Executive Director] Mark Aesch
about a week ago, and he seemed very open to the discussion of traffic flows
downtown in the bigger picture.”

But
Pritchard’s biggest hurdle will be convincing the city’s traffic engineers, he
says.

“The
traffic engineers particularly think it’s impossible to do,” he says of
converting St. Paul and other one-way streets to two-ways. “The current pattern
was designed — and I laugh when I say this because it goes so against how I
feel we should treat downtown — to get people into and out of downtown as
quickly and easily as possible. I can appreciate that, but, quite frankly, I
want people to come downtown and spend some time there.”

Next
on the task force’s radar screen: tapping the potential of downtown as a Wi-Fi
(wireless network/internet) zone. And what Pritchard coyly describes as “the
introduction of a concept that will take relationships between the city and
downtown businesses to the next level.”

—
Chad Oliveiri

This article appears in Apr 13-19, 2005.