What Makes A Dream House a Dream Home? A Remi Mural

When Tom and Rhonda Carpenter decided that it was time to retire from their automobile dealership business in Ohio, it didn't take them long to decide where their retirement home would be. Saturday, Tom attended his 56th consecutive Kentucky Derby; it was Rhonda's 35th, and the longtime racing fans quickly settled on Lexington, Kentucky as their new destination. They set about meticulously restoring and furnishing a home with enough land to keep future horses on-site, and packed their bags for the Bluegrass. But when the refinished basement was made into a media room, there was a big, blank white wall that needed filling. And so it was that TDN cartoonist Remi Bellocq got started on his first-ever mural.

The Carpenters unveiled the mural to family and friends at their Kentucky Oaks party Friday night.

“As soon as when we bought this house, we were walking around and deciding, `Okay, what are we going to do down here?'” recalled Rhonda, as she sat in the basement for an interview where Bellocq was hard at work on the finishing touches of the mural a week before the unveiling. “Tom has a Derby glass collection. He collects halters,” she said, gesturing to a wall festooned with the halters of famous horses. “We have all sorts of art that will cover this whole house. We thought, “Wouldn't a mural be cool?” We had read an article about Remi, and Tom started Googling him.”

They met with Bellocq, presented him with the idea, and sold him on it, but not without a little trepidation on his part.

Bellocq has been doing cartoons for years, just like his famous father, Pierre “Peb” Bellocq. But while Peb has done several murals–at Aqueduct, Gallagher's Steakhouse, Belmont Park, Churchill Downs, and more–this would be Remi's first. And living up to his famous father's standards figured to be tough.

“As a kid I painted,” he said. “My dad would have us paint watercolors at the beach. We'd go to the Jersey Shore and he'd say, `Okay, paint what you see.' But I never took any classes or anything. He taught me how to mix colors and work with oils and acrylics. The funny thing is that when I was in school and I wanted to take an art class as an elective, he said, `Well…no. I don't know your teachers, but all you're going to do is learn bad habits. Just paint what's natural.'”

When he asked his father for advice on painting the mural, Peb told him, “Start on the left. Work your way to the right. Cover all the white space.”

“His humor is still intact at 95,” Remi observed.

It wasn't long before he developed an even deeper appreciation for the work his father had done.

The wall is five feet high by 11 feet wide, and is painted in acrylic paint.

“The difference between this and working smaller with watercolors and pen and ink is that it's a different medium,” he said, standing in front of the mural in his painting apron. “So you have to kind of work somewhat quickly. The paints dry out, and then if you've got a mix of a color that you're happy with, trying to get it exactly the same two days later when you're going back over it is hard. I realize now all the little tricks that my dad had. When he painted the murals at Churchill Downs and Belmont, he would go to the store and get all the egg cartons he could get, because then he could mix small amounts and then kind match it like that, as opposed to trying to do too much at once. And the funniest thing was that when I started it, I had no idea how far paint would go. So I started on the sky and I'm sitting there with my brush and painting and I'm going, like, `I'm such an idiot.' I mixed my own light blue, didn't have enough, and realized it would never match. So I ran to the True Value hardware store around the corner and bought enough to cover it. Then when I did the dirt track, I did the same thing.”

Tom and Rhonda Carpenter make a cameo in their mural | Sue Finley photo

“Derby Dreaming” is the name of the mural, showing a future horse owned by the Carpenters winning the Derby. The horse wears a saddle towel which reads `Meadow Wood Farm,' the name of the new property. When they get around to buying horses and choosing silks, Bellocq promised them he would repaint the colors on the jockey to match theirs. But for now, the colors he was allowed to use are those of the Bellocq family silks-purple and green-“which was a very nice gesture of the Carpenters,” he said. Like in his father's murals, look hard and you'll find people you know. Here, the Carpenters stand by the finish line (she's in a pink hat) cheering home their winner.

“We thought we wanted it to be joyful, at Churchill Downs, and just representing the joy of the day. Remi showed us a couple of sketch ideas, and this was the idea we just loved.”
Bellocq said that for people who have worked a long time in the industry, it can be easy to forget what it was like to be a super-fan looking to get involved. “We've been at it so long that sometimes you forget that there are people out there who just love to get horse halters, and stuff like that,” said Bellocq.

“All industries need new blood,” added Rhonda.

“We're putting up fencing and landscaping the front. Literally, we just moved in. Remi started on this when there was no carpet in the room and there was no paint on the walls. So the house has evolved in the time he's been here, and now we need to put up a barn, and the paddocks, and we hope to have mares and babies in the backyard.
“Moving to Lexington,” she said. “This is the retirement dream.”

And the mural is the icing on the cake.

 

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Remi Bellocq Part 1: Keeping it Light at the TDN

In just less than a week, thousands of Derby-goers will pass under a 36 foot-long mural in the heart of the clubhouse at Churchill Downs depicting every jockey to win one of the first 130 editions of the GI Kentucky Derby.

The hand behind this Churchill Downs fixture may be unknown to many passers-by, but generations of racing fans quickly recognize the inscribed signature–Peb.

Artwork from Eclipse winner Pierre 'Peb' Bellocq is displayed at racetracks across the country, from Churchill Downs and Keeneland to Arlington, Del Mar, Oaklawn, Belmont, Aqueduct and the Meadowlands. Last year, the cartoonist was selected for the National Museum of Racing's Joe Hirsch Media Roll of Honor.

While the renowned artist-and author of several books- has stepped away from his sketchpad for the most part at the age of 95, his son Remi Bellocq, former CEO of the National HBPA and the current executive director of Bluegrass Community and Technical College's Equine Program, is now following in his father's footsteps.

“It's kind of like the family business,” the younger Bellocq cartoonist said. “I always joke, it's kind of like if you want to be a standup comedian and having Richard Pryor or Jerry Seinfeld as a parent because, you know, how can you live up to that? So I try to kind of carve out my own style.”

Soon, Bellocq will partner with the TDN to share his work with the racing community. His first piece will appear as a prelude to Kentucky Derby weekend.

“I've got some fun ideas for Derby-themed cartoons,” he hinted. “But I'm not going to share those yet because I want to keep them a surprise.”

Bellocq said he hopes to bring a bit of lightheartedness via his new platform, even on some of racing's more sensitive subjects.

“My father taught me a really good lesson,” Bellocq shared. “He said, 'Listen, there's an envelope and you want to push the edge of that envelope. You want to make it memorable and poignant, but stop short of where it gets to be crass or insulting.' So I've tried in my work to take a position and maybe push the envelope a little, but always with the idea that if you have 10 people and five people love it and five hate it, at least everybody chuckled.”

Hailing from several generations of skilled horsemen, the Bellocq family left their home in France in the early 1950s when demand for Pierre's work was first taking off. The two eldest sons of Pierre's five children were born in France while Remi and his two sisters were born in the U.S., but Bellocq said the family still spoke French at the dinner table.

He remembers growing up in Queens watching his father's fame grow in his role as the editorial cartoonist for the Morning Telegraph and its sister paper, Daily Racing Form.

Pierre and Remi Bellocq on the evening Pierre received The Jockey Club Metal in 2016. | photo courtesy Remi Bellocq

“Growing up watching him draw, my siblings and I all kind of doodled a bit at school, and I guess I kind of followed in his footsteps,” Bellocq said.

While the younger Bellocq did enjoy drawing as a hobby during childhood, he said his true passion was always for the horse.

“My first horse came over from a trainer named John Russell,” Bellocq recalled. “He was the very first person to start really worrying about where his horses went after their careers, before it became a big issue. I had my backyard horse in central New Jersey and I kind of taught myself to ride. Every day I would come back with branches in my helmet because he would just take off with me.”

Bellocq caught on quickly though, and by the time he was a teenager, he was up early in the mornings galloping horses at Belmont Park before school began. During the summers, he traveled to Normandy to work for owner, breeder and trainer David Powell. While overseas, he had an opportunity to become an amateur rider.

After traveling throughout North America and Europe as a jockey, Bellocq founded the Amateur Riders Club of America with his father while attending the University of Arizona's Agriculture Racetrack Management program.

“My first job was at Garden State Park in New Jersey,” Bellocq recalled. “Then from that point it's like working for a ball club. You move with ownership changes and all that. So I've had jobs at Garden State Park; Longacres in Seattle, where I met my wife; Hollywood Park; and Santa Anita. Then fast-forward to 2000, I was offered the job to run the National HBPA.”

Bellocq served as the National HBPA's CEO for a decade before stepping into his current role as the executive director of the equine program at Bluegrass Community and Technical College (BCTC).

“Our program has been around since 2006,” he explained. “We're formerly known as the North American Racing Academy, but in the last couple of years we've purposefully shifted from being known as a riding school to more of a workforce preparation and training program for all different jobs on the racetrack. Now we've officially changed our name to BCTC Equine. We're a full service-type program and as far as I know, we're the only career and training program on a community college level of its type in the country.”

Popular Remi Bellocq cartoon feature for the Florida Horse. | courtesy Remi Bellocq from Florida Horse

Bellocq said that as the program has grown in recent years, his role has morphed to help get the word out on what their training has to offer to the next generation in the sport.

“I kind of focus on advocacy and industry relations,” he said. “I also work on grant applications and things like that, but it's really outreach as much as anything.”

When he's not in his office at BCTC or on the ground at The Thoroughbred Center in Lexington overseeing students in training, Bellocq can be found in his home office wearing a different hat as he puts the vision for his next cartoon down on paper.

He said that readers should not expect to see the same thing from him every day. While most of his features are aimed to put a smile on the viewer's face, others may be a bit more thought-provoking.

“I'm not afraid to draw a cartoon on something that's maybe a little controversial,” he said. “But at the same time, you have to mix that up with other content, like if you see something super funny that happens on a day-to-day basis on the racetrack, you've got to do those as well. So that's the balance that I'm going to try to strike and hopefully the readers will respond.”

But in each and every piece, he said he hopes to conserve the timelessness that was often noted of his father's work.

“I admire what he did for all those years with the Morning Telegraph and Daily Racing Form because I can pull out some of his older drawings and they're still funny today. So that's what I aspire to do someday and hopefully in the TDN, I can bring a lot of laughter to folks.”

Watch for part two of our conversation with Remi Bellocq on his hand in the growth of BCTC's Equine Program.

The post Remi Bellocq Part 1: Keeping it Light at the TDN appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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