Stringed canvas
Think guitars and artwork don't have much in common? Meet Yvonne Barlog de Villiers.
By LENNIE BENNETT
Published June 4, 2007
TAMPA - Artists switch mediums all the time. But Yvonne Barlog de Villiers may be one for the record books.
For 25 years, her medium was stained glass, for which she regularly garnered private and public commissions. She created the glowing panels in Tampa International Airport's chapel, for example. That was before the Key Largo, Zen and Tucson.
Those are guitars, part of the catalog produced by Dean Guitars, a Tampa company whose instruments are favored by heavy metal musicians.
Soft-spoken, with an ethereal grace, de Villiers and her talent seem incompatible with mosh pits. Elliott Rubinson, a fan of de Villiers and CEO of Armadillo Enterprises, which owns Dean, convinced her otherwise, hiring her to create inlays for three guitars for the Dean line. She came up with decidedly non-head-banging images for the limited edition group: Chinese symbols of peace, a beach scene with undulating palms and cute lizards.
That was about four years ago. A year later, she persuaded him to start a new line. For female guitarists. To be named Luna, after her grandmother. They would be beautiful, lightweight and proportioned for smaller hands. Original art would adorn them. They would be the antithesis of the Dean guitar image.
"There are a few companies making guitars for women, " Rubinson says, "but it seemed to me an untapped market, so I said why not? And Yvonne is so creative."
De Villiers, 57, a Tampa native, hasn't worked in glass since.
Going from glass to guitars is unconventional but not quite as odd as it might seem.
"I realized the technique of wood inlay wasn't so different from stained glass, " she says.
A guitar for Mom
There was more, though, something personal for de Villiers in her desire to make guitars for women.
"My mother, who's 82, was my inspiration."
Hilda Williers is a classically trained pianist and self-taught bass guitar player with a penchant for Jimi Hendrix. (Her name is different from her daughter's because when her husband's family emigrated from Cuba in the early 20th century, customs officials apparently thought de Villiers was too hard to spell. Her daughter uses the original spelling.)
"My two sons were playing the guitar when they were about 12 and 14, " Williers says. "They wanted to form a band and couldn't find a bass player so they said, "Mama, you can do it.' I said, 'Don't tempt me. That's my fantasy.' They bought me a bass for $50. I have a good ear, and I was determined."
So for about 40 years, Williers and sons played gigs in Tampa, sometimes six nights a week, with their band, Sage.
"They weren't the Partridge Family, " says de Villiers. "They played heavy rock."
She says she watched her mother strap on the guitar with increasing concern.
"She began having back and shoulder problems and devised this harness to help distribute the weight. But it was getting to be too much for her at 80. I wanted to make something lighter for her."
She gave her mother the first Luna bass prototype, a sleek black cutaway with an elaborate mother-of-pearl inlay of a luna moth. It weighed just more than 7 pounds, compared with the 11-pound Fender she had been using.
"I could not believe the difference, " Williers says.
Pushing the envelope
All Luna guitars are recognizable by the progression of the moon's phases in mother-of-pearl marking the frets. From that commonality rises great creative diversity.
De Villiers' electric guitars are sexy, with curvaceous bodies, satin finishes and interesting, discreet inlays.
The real creativity is in her designs for Luna's acoustic-electric guitars, those that are designed to be played with or without amplification. In some styles, the inlays encircling the sound hole, called rosettes, are replaced by more elaborate ones of flowers and dragonflies.
The Henna series, covered with patterns that look like stenciling, was a big challenge.
"I wanted to push the envelope about what's on a guitar, " de Villiers says. "Laser cutouts have always been around the sound hole, but I wanted to see if it was possible to use it on the entire guitar."
She contacted Alex Morgan, a British artist and graphic designer specializing in the history of cultural decoration, to help create designs resembling henna body art. His designs were applied to the guitars, front and back, with lasers. It took almost a year, going back and forth with the luthiers, who actually make the guitars, to get the depth and tones of the laser burns right.
For a child-sized guitar, she had the finish made so that its young owner could decorate it with markers, wipe it off, and do it again and again.
De Villiers wanted to replicate art evoking pre-Raphaelite paintings onto the instrument for the Fantasie series. That required a process similar to photo transfer, in which the images are printed onto a material that adheres to the wood. Those guitars glow with softly rendered pre-Raphaelite landscapes and beautiful, dreamy women.
Emmy-nominated singer-songwriter Abra Moore features a Fantasie guitar on the cover of her new CD, being released June 12.
"I discovered them at a trade show, " says the Austin, Texas, musician. "I fell in love with the artwork. I always get comments on it. It hangs on my wall like a painting when I'm not using it."
Beautiful function
Looks are great, but a guitar's real value is in the quality of its sound. De Villiers relies on Dean's technical experts to get that right, often involving a give-and-take on the design that won't compromise the guitar's main function.
"I come up with a concept and then talk to tons of musicians, " she says.
"I was first drawn to the Luna guitars because of the incredible visuals, " says New Jersey-based musician Vicki Genfan. "When I played the Muse 12-string, I was really excited to hear and feel what I could do with an instrument that has throughout my past been a physical challenge for me, partly due to having rather small hands. It's opened up a lot of creative possibilities."
De Villiers' husband, Mike Barlog, was enlisted early on to help. He is a master carpenter who makes custom craftsman furniture at his Clearwater studio, Earthwoodworks. Now he also makes the guitar body prototypes that are shipped to Korea for manufacturing.
Rubinson says Dean sells about 100, 000 guitars a year, of which 5, 000 are Lunas.
The Luna brand "is still pretty small as a function of Dean, " says Derek Badala, its national sales product manager. "But it has grown a lot, and we anticipate that to continue."
One inhibiting factor, oddly, is the guitars' affordability. Child-proportioned guitars sell for less than $100. A top-of-the-line acoustic is in the $500 range. A Martin guitar, considered one of the best instruments, can cost thousands of dollars. Part of the difference is simply name recognition, but craftsmanship and materials (mainly exotic woods, which resonate better) are the real dividing line in cost. Abra Moore, for example, says she sometimes uses her Luna for concerts, but she chose her Martins for the recording studio.
In other words, the Luna so far has been geared more to the public and less to serious musicians, which makes the all-important celebrity endorsements harder to garner.
De Villiers and Rubinson are closing that gap; Luna will launch a new line aimed at professional players this winter.
"I want a guitar I can play in the studio and onstage, " Rubinson says.
For de Villiers, it's another potential canvas for her creative ideas.
"I'm working on a Celtic form of ornamentation for a new series, " she says. "We haven't been able to get the translucency right. But we're close."
Lennie Bennett can be reached at (727) 893-8293 or lennie@sptimes.com.
See the guitars
To see the entire Luna line of guitars, click on www.lunaguitars.com. To see Abra Moore's new CD cover and Vicki Genfan playing a Luna, click "Luna artists."