Dressing up Main Avenue
Lorraine Taylor reflects on 42 years of painting local storefronts

Santa Claus does a little conducting in the window of Durango Music early this week. This and much of the holiday window art along Main Avenue is the work of 70-year-old Lorraine Taylor and her granddaughter Jymmy. Taylor has been at it for over four decades and is showing no sign of letting up anytime soon./Photo by Todd Newcomer

by Jeff Mannix

For the past 42 years, Lorraine Taylor has been slathering tempera paint on Main Avenue windows. Even though Taylor pockets some walking-around money for her artistry and frostbite, she can’t escape the Christmas spirit, even after four decades. Every year in the weeks leading up to Christmas, she and her granddaughter Jymmy rack their brains and put likenesses of Santa Claus, sprigs of holly, candy canes, fur boughs, snowflakes and reindeer onto between 40 and 100 panes of plate glass.

Though her spirit is on public display every December, anyone who knows Lorraine has seen that same zest and whimsical twinkle in her clear blue eyes for each day, week, month and season of the year. Taylor is a chronically happy, well-adjusted Western woman who has no idle gear, and she finds that essence in everything she does. At 70, she drives teams of draught horses; leads wagontrain excursions for weeks at a time down Weber Canyon into the desert; runs a ranch with her husband, Charlie, up La Plata Canyon; and has pretty nearly lived her life off the grid of common expectations. It’s certain that she can build fence, mend harness, whip up a winning meal for a dozen, stitch a gash, raise kids and animals with knack and even weld. And while you wouldn’t expect Taylor to be painting snowmen and frilly script across windows, you know that if she’s doing it, it must be something special.

“Artist … me? I’m no artist. This is fun,” Taylor says with her usual playfulness. “I never asked anyone for these jobs; they call me, and I do it for them. I used to be the only one who would paint these windows. Now there are a few more doing it, real artists some of them.”

Asked which of the windows really exhibit her artwork, Taylor replies, “the ones you like.”

Taylor nearly quit painting windows 10 years ago. That’s been her plan after each of the four decades she’s been at the messy game. “But people are happy to see me,” she says. “So I show up each year, and I’m happy that they’re happy, and I keep on painting.”

Some cocktail-napkin math suggests that Taylor has gone through 336 quarts of paint since 1963, and a glance down at her carryalls reveals about 30 paint brushes in all the typical artist’s sizes and shapes, including about a dozen cheap foam brushes. Her paints have been decanted into plastic peanut butter jars, and she uses the tops to mix special colors. “All you need are the four basic colors, even I figured that out,” Taylor answers when asked how many colors she carries. “This isn’t rocket science, it’s Christmas,” she chuckles. And a quick survey of windows confirms that red Santas, green leaves, white snow and black hats and scarves dominate.

Lorraine and Jymmy get their ideas from saving Christmas cards. “I don’t like to be told what to paint, and I don’t ever repeat myself, which isn’t easy if the weather is good, and I get in a hundred windows,” Taylor muses as she swoops an elaborate “C” for the beginning of Christmas. Watch these two for a while, and they begin to look like Mrs. Claus and one of the elves busying themselves in preparation for Mr. Claus’s around-the-world package delivery. These helpers work quickly, pack up and move on … so much cheer to spread.

Taylor’s holiday trout splashes in the front window of Duranglers, attracting looks from passersby./Photo by Todd Newcomer

Standards change over time, of course, and Taylor pays attention. “I have never painted ‘X-Mas,’ I just can’t make myself do it,” Taylor recalls, “and strictly religious scenes aren’t wanted anymore, and actually Happy Holidays has just about taken the place of Merry Christmas. And no more drunk Santas.

“It’s a holiday season for everybody,” she continues, “and I can’t paint an angel that doesn’t look like a cartoon, and I don’t like cartoon angels, so that’s just fine with me.”

Snowmen are a cool item this year. Jymmy prides herself on snowmen – an apprentice achievement – and does most of the coloring inside Lorraine’s lines. They work in tandem, these two, often backing out into traffic to gauge dimensions or admire their work – an occupational hazard that so far hasn’t killed them or attracted the attention of Durango’s permitting department. Their favorite windows so far are Tequila’s restaurant, Kangaroo Express and Jymmy’s own jumping fish on the window of Duranglers on the west side of Main. Another whimsical window fronts Durango Music, where Santa is conducting a display of sound equipment with his back to traffic.

People have fun around Lorraine Taylor because Lorraine is having fun, so it’s not surprising that Jymmy is the third generation of Taylors involved in this quixotic enterprise. “It’s a funny thing that I started doing,” Taylor bemuses, “how many people would pick up a brush and do this thing?”

The holiday season is continually being pushed forward, Taylor notes. Calls for Christmas windows start coming in now before Thanksgiving, which may upset Taylor’s sense of decorum. But at the same time, she has more time to fulfill all her requests and tend to the myriad other chores before she puts her head down at eight or nine at night. Window painting is regulated by the weather, too. You can’t paint outside in the snow or rain, and the frigid temperatures this year are not only brutal, but paint begins to set up and does not flow. Window painting will come to an end on Dec. 18 for Taylor.

“I want to finish by the 15th,” she says. “But if I still have some of my favorite customers left, I’ll go to the 18th – but that’s it. I’m going home.”

Just what does it cost downtown merchants to dress up their windows for the few weeks of the year when they can reap as much as 40 percent of their annual income? “I don’t know,” Taylor says irascibly. “Somewhere from $5 to $500. I guess it’s about $45 to $60 average. I don’t know; it doesn’t really matter. Sometimes I don’t charge anything. It all depends.”

Money is not the issue, it’s clear. The money, which is not unimportant to a rancher who usually counts a half-dozen enterprises contributing to survival, is clearly not the only reason painting frolicking Christmas cartoons on storefronts has kept Lorraine Taylor shivering for four decades.

“If I wasn’t doing this, I’d be doing something else, probably harder. This is fun. It makes everybody happy,” Lorraine says. •