Cole goes for the 'wow!

Mel Cooke • Gleaner Writer

Scheed Cole thinks big and three-dimensional. He has to. In his passion-turned-enterprise, Props and More, Cole conceptualises, designs and constructs many marketing and advertising projects which test the physical boundaries of his warehouse/workshop space at 85 West Road, Arnett Gardens, Kingston. They do not, however, test the limits of his imagination.

Not yet. Not in a venture which is committed to "putting the wow into your world" run by a man who says "I want to be out of the box with my life."

"I love to see the expression on people's faces," Cole said, dropping his jaw and popping his eyes in imitation of the shocked and wowed.

Among his more recent, heavily publicised 'wow' creations is the set for season three of The Ity and Fancy Cat Show, which opened last Sunday on TVJ. The show's name is spelt out in huge, brightly hued colours ("The backdrop goes up 16 feet high. Who does that?"). The letters are sturdy enough to sit on ("The letters had to get multiple layers of reinforcement"). The texture is smooth ("We had to use a lot of technical skills to get the cardboard smooth and create a good finish"). And it all has to be transportable, not only to move from Props and More's base to the Dennis Scott Studio, Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, where it fills the stage end to end, but also to be stowed away in between recordings of the comedy show.

Then there was the Tikki Mask for Digicel, done as a subcontractor for the 2007 Jazz and Blues Festival in Montego Bay, which invited all who would venture into the maw of the beast. Cole recalls that one reviewer said "it rivalled the biggest act of the night".

Attention grabber

"I am the grab-the-attention man and the larger-than-life man, out-of-the-box man, the crazy man," Cole sums up himself.

But Cole thinks small as well. He has to, in a business where the 'wow' is in the details. A miniature, less seemingly malevolent version of the open-mouthed crocodile which does combination welcome and sentry duties at the entrance to Props and More is in progress on the long work table. Man-made greenery festoons the stand-alone cave of his own making, populated with smaller scale beasts and a monkey with palm extended in supplication or for a 'low five' - or both.

And he goes small in order to go large. A merry chicken head gapes its maw in a mock-up of a project which, if the client ever signs off, will rear 70 feet into the air, welcoming all into the bridge at Faith's Pen, St Ann. He is also building more than props for profit, the school-style seating near the work table indicative of his attention to human detail and boosting its potential.

"I have a training programme - TAP (Teaching and Apprenticeship Programme). Students come for free. I train them in the multiple areas I know - fibreglass fabrication, painting, ceramics, woodworking, painting, foam fabrication, sculpting, designing techniques, interior decorating. Because of the nature of what I do, I have to be competent in many skill areas," Cole said.

"I am a product of this same cycle - inner city. Olympic Way. Right in the heart of Waterhouse, Tower Hill, Mall Road."

Cole is also patient. A few miles, but lifetimes away, he chose to spend an extra year at Mico when the date for the final-year show was moved forward. "It was not about getting a diploma. I was to see my level at that point in history, which I will not come to again," Cole said. Preparing for the show the following year, he put up a sign 'No Sleep Until I'm Dead', virtually moved into the art department, and set out to create Ironic from old car parts and Mother of Time.

"I had never welded before in my life, but the material called out to me," he said. He remembers walking around in greasy clothes, toting car parts, 'old iron' on his shoulder. The seven-foot high sculptures were too big for the space he was assigned, so Cole requested a room that was not being used, covered the lights to create green illumination, had things hanging from the ceiling and put trash on the floor to further bring out his theme, 'the evolution of man'.

"People stood at the door and (he does the open-mouthed, wide-eyed thing again). That's the impact I wanted," Cole said.