We recently connected with Greg Lanterman and have shared our conversation below.
Greg, appreciate you joining us today. What’s something crazy on unexpected that’s happened to you or your business
During a long period of our company history, we were very heavily involved in brand aesthetics via art, sculpture, lighting and signage for a well known pizza chain. We essentially were building themed, immersive environments. It was an exciting time to stretch our artistic minds through creativity in a public space. We would design the individual franchised spaces, trying not to duplicate anything from project to project, leaving the individual franchisees with a feeling of ownership and identity all while promoting the overall brand. Some franchisees had a lot of input–some good, some not so much– and others had seen our work and let us run the show without much interference. This of course is both a blessing and a curse as you can pour your heart and soul into designs only for someone to not like it or their budget decreases and you are forced to value engineer and make some “less-than” version of what could have been.
Some of the projects and budgets were larger and therefore allowed us the opportunity to create some really interesting things. A new location in New Orleans, LA. provided a healthy budget for the art and lighting and looked to be a perfect storm of creativity. We had worked with the owners of this location previously on some of their other stores and had a great rapport– they trusted us completely with the design process. We presented all of our concepts in the final board presentation, and luckily all ideas and overall budgets were approved with pretty much no changes. This almost never happens.
At the time I had a crew of 4 (including myself) and we began fabrication of all of the items in studio the next week. The package included hand painted, original portraits of blues musicians in baroque frames mounted on old doors we painted, a layered 3D shack with a hand painted voodoo queen in the window framed with chasing red bulb lights, a 40′ x 10′ hand painted mural with a layered, LED halo lit centerpiece of the late Dr. John in all of his glory, color changing LED snare drum pendant lights, a hostess stand made from 2 antique standing radio consoles (also internally lit), and the “piece de resistance”– a “vortex” of musical instruments in the center of the dining space made from about 60 individual pieces, including a vintage piano from the 1800’s.
It took us about 6 weeks to complete fabrication of all the elements. The “vortex” was by far the most difficult, as we had to engineer ways to suspend the instruments so that the cables were both mostly aesthetically hidden and also safe for guests to walk underneath. As an artist during the design phase, it is easy to get lost in the excitement of the creation and not consider all of the aspects to make something on paper into a reality– teaching me my first real lesson in time management. For example, the antique piano was incredibly heavy and was way more of a pain logistically to pick up and bring into the studio than anticipated. Additionally, dismantling a piano is very difficult when you are also trying to preserve the illusion of it being whole and untouched to the viewer. It took a team of 2 people a little over a week to take it apart, remove the harp and then reassemble to appear like nothing ever happened. All of the other elements were in full swing, but there was still so much to do and time was our enemy. We ended up working late nights and weekends for the next three weeks straight with pretty much no time off, but the work was rewarding and we persevered and got it done on a Saturday early afternoon– just in time to go home and pack for the next days departure.
The next morning (Sunday early am) we arrived to load up our 30′ enclosed trailer with all of the art, half of the studio worth of tools, ladders, scaffold etc. Loading up for a big install (especially out of town), takes a minimum of half a day in the best of circumstances. Let me tell you, if you aren’t good at Tetris, you will be really soon after having to load 10 pounds of crap in a 5 pound bag, as that is an art form in and of itself. And it’s not only about how much is going in, but how it’s loaded, as an improperly loaded trailer can be very dangerous– considering we had 6 weeks of hard work inside, I didn’t want to take any chances.
Finally on the road for the 9 hour drive, everyone is already exhausted from the previous weeks of work– not to mention all the effort getting loaded up–so nap time for some of my guys (although I had a rule that whomever called “shotgun” had to stay awake with me while I was driving). We arrived safely and checked into a hotel that would be our home for the next week. Oh, and did I mention it was 9 days before Christmas? This will be important later.
We got up early the next morning after much needed sleep, ate a free hotel breakfast and hit the ground running. Upon pulling up to the site, I had some of the guys start unloading while two of us went to go and assess the site– knowing full well there were going to be some challenges as this was a restaurant located on the 2nd floor. We immediately noticed there was no freight elevator…how did I miss that detail??? Pause in the story for a moment to reflect– after this job we were sure to ask all of the right questions, get pictures of a job site prior to traveling there and do preliminary site visits to prevent this kind of thing from happening. Ever. Again. Anyway, we had a lot of large heavy items that wouldn’t fit in the small passenger elevator, nor could be carried up stairs, so after a bit of thought we devised a plan. There was a Lull (a large four wheel drive forklift for exterior use) which we commandeered and used to slowly (and carefully) lift everything up to the outside patio on the second floor. With a two man crew on the patio and two on the ground, we were able to get everything in the space in about 4 hours. After staging all of the tools, setting up zones of activity and going over the order of priority it was pushing into the 12 hour mark and it was time to go eat some dinner, have a beer and get some rest. But I couldn’t help feeling we were already behind schedule.
For the next five days, we worked 14-16 hours per day and got most everything installed, including painting the large scale Dr. John mural. Then came installing the musical instrument “vortex”. There were so many moving parts to this and the installation required constant feedback from me on the floor communicating with my team of how to place each piece of the puzzle and what height it should be. Then there was the wiring for the internal LEDs for most of the instruments, all leading to a central location hidden in the ceiling above to a low voltage transformer and controller. This was the day before Christmas Eve and we ended up working 20+ hours to get it done so we could head home and hopefully not miss Santa. After about 4 hours of “sleep” at the hotel, we were up again early to get to the site and begin the clean up and loading process to get home. We were on the road around 9am, exhausted and began our 9 hour journey headed home on Christmas Eve. What we anticipated being “no problem” to install all of this in 10 hours a day, times 5 days turned into an 7 day 100+ hour ordeal (not including travel time or loading to and from).
To add insult to injury, my partner (in life and business) Laura and I had offered to host my entire family for Christmas Day (for the first time by the way) and my ass didn’t get home until 7pm on Christmas Eve. We had some last minute gift shopping to do (that I insisted she wait until I was back to do so we could go together) and then we realized we didn’t have enough serving utensils or plates for the dinner. So as soon as I got home we hit Best Buy, Barnes and Noble, Target and Kroger on Christmas Eve night! I think I was in bed about midnight and had to play host the next day to my whole family. Needless to say, Laura was less than happy about this turn of events. But as we always do, we took it in stride, marched on, made it work and had a great holiday with our family and friends.
Lessons I learned as a result of this experience:
– over estimate how long something is going to take to accomplish, especially considering the unknowns
– never underestimate logistics and importance of site conditions
– always install the hardest project first, NOT last
– never plan a large, difficult, out of town install anywhere near Christmas
Throughout all the tumult described in our adventures, this was one of the best projects we ever worked on and we were all so very proud of our efforts, as well as receiving rave reviews from the owners and their guests. Despite the chaos to get the job done, we learned some valuable lessons that have carried on ever since to make us more successful as a company. The icing on the cake was Dr. John himself visited the restaurant and loved the mural– may he rest in peace and forever boogie to his groovy music.
Greg, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
As a small child, I’ve always been an artist and a little crazy, a quality that is required to excel in my field. From painting my first large scale mural in my 6th grade lunchroom to eventually becoming a professional artist, designer, fabricator and everything in between (and there was a good bit in between).
I started Dreamscape originally to showcase my own art. It morphed into a gallery/retail store with a flare for the unique, unusual and one of a kind offerings. The next evolution was to move into commercial art which leads us to our current position as a multi faceted fabrication studio.
Dreamscape Art and Design is a boutique craftsman design and fabrication studio. We specialize in designing, engineering and fabricating (or engineering and fabricating others’ designs). It is hard to put us in a certain category because we have many capabilities that set us apart, there are pretty much no limitations here. The variety of what our clients have asked for spans the gamut and honestly, makes our job both more challenging, rewarding and fascinating. We are known for having excellent customer service, going above and beyond at every turn and providing an exceptional product, while being on time and on budget. Including, stellar communication with the client, their architectural and construction teams throughout the process. We take great pride in all that we do, particularly exceeding expectations.
Both the pleasure and the pain of our kind of business is the inconsistency of types of projects. There is very little repetition which makes it very interesting (and feeds my ADD) but it also basically means you are re-inventing the wheel almost every time.
How’d you meet your business partner?
In the story above, I mentioned Laura as my partner but we started out as friends. She actually worked for the large pizza company corporate office as an executive assistant. She was a new hire when I first started working with them as a vendor/freelance artist. She stepped way beyond what her title described and was an integral part of the company identity through the aesthetics and art. Through about a 2 year period we worked closely and were good friends, she was easy to talk to and fun to be around. We kind of new that might be something more, so we had our first date on Friday September 3rd, 2010, then the second on Saturday the 4th, the third on Sunday the 5th–then we kind of lived together. She left the pizza company in 2011 and came to work for me full time. I’m not sure how I managed the business before she came along, but I’m sure I wouldn’t want to do it without her. We did have one undisputable, non-negotiable rule– I was the boss at work and she was the boss at home. (Even though I really knew she would become the boss mostly in both places). In 2018, after years of hard work and dedication she became vice president of operations for our company and a full partner.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
Also related, for the first 6 years or so we had almost all of our eggs in one basket with the pizza company. We were an integral part of evolving their brand and the associated aesthetics. In 2017 or so, due to no fault of ours, they made some internal changes to simplify and greatly reduce the amount of art that was going into their new stores. Even though we had other clients, these guys were our biggest by far and even though there were verbal commitments of our continued successful relationship, they went in a different direction.
We had to start scrambling and quick. We had a huge portfolio of really great interesting art installations, but not a lot that was translatable to the types of industry we were trying to break into. It took a lot of patience and some good faith from new clients, but we have done quite well. Now we are proud to provide amazing projects for a large swath of different clients, from custom chandeliers I’ve designed and fabricated for the movie industry to work at the Georgia Aquarium to elaborate metal work in some of the finest restaurants in Atlanta. We no longer have any strong reliance on one big client, rather we have a lot of big and small clients and have increased our abilities as well as our presence in the Atlanta area and beyond.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.dreamscapemoon.com
- Instagram: dreamscapemoon