If all goes according to plan, customers coming into the Cloverdale Kitchen today will see George Cortesis smiling at them.
In a Trade Street studio, mural artist Beth Spieler has been working on a 16-foot mural that features Cortesis and some of the restaurants he was associated with over the years. Her plan was to install it at the restaurant yesterday.
"Monday morning, the patrons will see it for the first time," Spieler said.
Cortesis, who was killed in a car accident on Feb. 2, 1998, began the Cloverdale Kitchen when the Cloverdale Shopping Center opened in 1968. In 1985, his sons Dino and Johnny joined him in the business.
Over the years, the restaurant has become a regular part of many customers' lives.
"We see a lot of people every day," Dino Cortesis said. "You can talk directly to the top management."
George Cortesis' spirit is still very much a part of the restaurant, Dino Cortesis said. "The heart of the restaurant is my father."
Some of the restaurant's décor -- including a harbor scene on one wall that George Cortesis picked out -- dated to the early days of the restaurant.
"People come in and say, ‘What is that?'" Johnny Cortesis said.
A while back, the brothers started thinking about making some changes. When the topic came up with regular customer Nancy Patterson, she mentioned that her daughter, Beth, painted murals professionally. The Cortesis brothers began talking with Spieler about possibilities.
They had pictures of restaurants that their father had been associated with over the years. And, having spent a lot of time downtown growing up, that meant a lot to them, too.
"Let's do something," Johnny Cortesis said to Spieler. "Let‘s make a big downtown scene."
They were in business when Spieler came up with a design that took liberties with history by moving the Little Pep Grill and Cup & Saucer onto Fourth Street across from Morris Service, which was on Fourth next to the Carolina Theatre (now the Stevens Center).
"They were all significant restaurants in George Cortesis' career," Spieler said.
Working from family photographs, she put George Cortesis at the heart of the picture standing next to one of his cars, and his wife, Frances, nearby with young versions of Dino and Johnny.
In the background, Spieler put modern downtown buildings.
"It's like the past reflecting on the new in the distance," Spieler said.
For the past couple of weeks, Spieler -- using acrylic paint on medium-density fiberboard -- has been working on the mural in a studio in the building that houses Artworks Gallery. Her plan was to move it over to the restaurant and install it on Sunday, a day the restaurant is closed.
Spieler, 38, has been painting murals professionally since she was 25 and the second of her four children was on the way. Her work includes creating sets for television news programs.
For many years, none of her mural commissions called for people. Since she did the first one with people about three years back, people have become a regular part of her murals. It's a development that she said she really likes.
The largest mural she has painted is a 25-by-110-foot mural on the side of a historic building in Shawnee, Okla. The commission came through connections she made when she was a student at Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee.
She also has painted murals in the Washington, D.C., area. Many of her murals are inside homes. Her outdoor murals in this area include ones at the Old Town Coin Laundry and ones on the sides of the Old North State Winery and Globe Tobacco buildings in Old Town. She also did the bar at Hutch & Harris restaurant on Fourth Street.
"I want to engage an audience," Spieler said. "That's my heart's desire."
kunderwood@wsjournal.com
727-7389
More information about Beth Spieler and her art is available at www.artabout.smugmug.com
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