Artwork In Progress

Painter Re-Creates Classics at Rosslyn Construction Site

If you've driven through downtown Rosslyn recently, it's likely that you've seen Sidewalk Sam at work.

That was him last week, sitting in a wheelchair with a "Sidewalk Sam" label taped on the back, hard at work re-creating Monet's "Woman With a Parasol" on a 5-by-8-foot canvas.

For more than four decades, Sidewalk Sam has been bringing the work of world-renowned artists to the masses with his reproductions. His latest art gallery is the site of the Turnberry Tower high-rise condominiums being built at Fort Myer Drive and Key Boulevard. At the end of the 10-day project, he will have re-created 20 paintings (two a day) by such masters as Renoir, Matisse, da Vinci and Monet.

"It's a marathon thing. If we were doing the Sistine Chapel, we'd finish it in two days!" Sam said to passerby Paloma Gonzalez as she walked to her Rosslyn apartment.

Sam's studio is a gaping construction site; Turnberry Tower is scheduled to be finished by the end of 2009. The project's Florida-based developer decided that instead of plastering the sidewalks looping around the site with ads, it would hire Sam, who had worked with the company in Miami Beach.

"The arts are so strong here" in Rosslyn, said Jim Cohen, vice president of sales for Turnberry Ltd. "We've gotten nothing but great reviews over it."

It's a win-win situation for the company and the community, Cohen said. The community gains some aesthetically pleasing works of art, and the company creates a recognizable site.

When the paintings are finished tomorrow, they will hang until construction is complete. Cohen isn't sure what the company will do with them after that, but he said they probably will be donated to a school or museum.

Sam began the Rosslyn project with the "Mona Lisa," the same painting he first re-created on a Boston sidewalk nearly 40 years ago.

He was born Robert Guillemin and was well on his way to becoming a successful artist, complete with one-man shows. But it didn't feel right. He didn't like that most art was confined to museums and the wealthy, inaccessible to most of society.

"I thought, there ought to be an application where art moved out of the museum and into people's lives," he said.

He stepped outside one day, saw the sidewalk and, by the end of the day had adopted the "Sidewalk Sam" persona.