George Kalesik designed, built, and painted the dog in an airplane riding up and down on the pump jack at the corner of highways 80 and 183 in Luling. Anyone who has driven through the “Watermelon Capital of Texas” has seen Kalesik’s artwork.
Born and raised in the Czech community around Shiner, Kalesik has been an artist all his life. He got his first professional sign commission when he was 14 years old. With the exception of a few months of working in a boot factory, he has always made his living with a set of paintbrushes.
In 1980, Kalesik opened his sign shop in a barn on his parents’ farm north of Moulton. The “Welcome to Gonzales” sign? Kalesik did that. “I’ll do any kind of sign except for electric signs,” he says.
Just for fun, he started doing yard decorations at Christmastime. He would cut a shape out of plywood and then paint a Santa riding a longhorn or a reindeer pulling a sleigh. It wasn’t long before the neighbors asked for one, he says. Making three or four holiday yard signs a year has turned into a production of 3,000-4,000 pieces a year.
Almost half of his business is devoted to making holiday yard art that can best be described as Americana country art. In a showroom on the outskirts of Moulton, he has colorful cutouts for every major holiday, from Easter bunnies to Halloween pumpkins, but it is the Christmas decorations that are the most popular. Each one is hand-painted and unique.
While Kalesik was doing a sign job in Luling, the local chamber of commerce asked him to design a set of humorous signs for the Yule Trail for its business district. Chamber members loved his sketches, and now his paintings of elves, gumdrops, and candy canes can be seen in front of stores during the holidays.
A vast oil and natural-gas field was discovered in Luling in 1922. That sulfur odor as you enter town is the smell of money, as dozens of wells deliver more than 900,000 barrels of crude oil annually. “Doing the art on the pump jacks for Luling was fun and challenging,” Kalesik says. “Each one is unique and had to be custom-fitted.”
In all, he has decorated 16 pump jacks around town, each one incorporating the motion of the pump into the design. There is a butterfly with wings that flap, a shark snapping at a smaller fish, and a cow jumping over the moon.
Contact the Luling Chamber of Commerce at 830/875-3214 or www.lulingcc.org for a guide to Kalesik’s pump-jack art.
Kalesik’s holiday lawn art can be seen at George’s Art & Sign Shop, 702 S. Lancaster (FM 532), in Moulton. He can be contacted at 361/596-7226 or through www.georgesart.com.
949th in a series. Day Trips, Vol. 2, a book of “Day Trips” 101-200, is available for $8.95, plus $3.05 for shipping, handling, and tax. Mail to: Day Trips, PO Box 33284, South Austin, TX 78704.
This article appears in September 11 • 2009.
