Artist Delivers With Designer Mailboxes
“It started out as a joke,” Nini Policappelli confides, “a little something for a friend of mine. He had this very expensive house, but out in front of it was a mailbox that said ‘poorhouse.’ ” Some joke. The Italian artist’s custom mailboxes, now gracing the grounds of half a dozen of Beverly Hills’ posher palazzos , sell for $5,000 and up--way up.
Nor does Nini feel overpaid. Not a bit of it. Asked whether the price is a tribute to his genius, he answers: “Obviously--or I wouldn’t get the money.”
Described as “whimsical sentinels,” his boxes--aluminum, treated to resemble pewter--convey the personal characteristics of their owners, as filtered through the fertile brain of the artist. Friend Gaetano Bonifacio “has a gimme-gimme attitude,” Nini jokes. “He always wants more, so the ‘arm’ of his mailbox is attached to its ‘brain.’ ” “Victory” was created for Varujan Assoian, “the man who built the pipeline from Iran to Russia. The box has the tube under its arm, because he’s always in control of the situation.”
The double-headed “Gemelli” (Twins) is for Ben-Deny Binafand, “playing off his love for his two sons.” Then there’s “Decision,” a mailbox with a wry face that Nini swears was the expression on client Marshall Redman’s face “when I quoted my price.”
Kicky though they may be, the mailboxes are just a sideline for Nini, whose extraordinarily apposite surname means “many hats.” Forever fascinated with unique combinations of metal, plastic, lacquers, synthetics as well as the more traditional marble and stone, Nini, who also has “created the water watch,” is off this month on short trips to Italy--to exhibit several high-fashion designs--and China--”to show a new product I’ve developed; I can’t tell you what.”
“Besides creating forms and splashing colors,” he says, “an artist should be involved in R&D.; My entire life has been spent learning more. Da Vinci? Ha! If I could be his cousin, I’d be happy.”
Five Who Didn’t Let Handicaps Stand in Their Way
“You take stock, figure out what you really want to be, and then you find a way.”
So says actor Jim Byrnes. So also, at one time or another, said the five recipients of this year’s Mainstream Milestone Awards, honored by the Los Angeles Jaycees last week. Those who found a way: Judy Brown of Woodland Hills, senior account manager for computer systems division of Gould Inc.; Geri Esten of Venice, psychotherapist for the MS Society; Dr. Julie Madorsky of Claremont, director of Casa Colina Hospital; Hank Schofield of Redondo Beach, senior claims adjuster for Metropolitan Stevedore Co.; and Jack Shanahan of Manhattan Beach, creative graphics manager for The Times.
What they have in common with Byrnes: physical handicaps, indomitability, achievement. And for keynote speaker, they couldn’t have picked a better man.
Byrnes, the dashing and cerebral Lifeguard on CBS-TV’s popular “Wiseguy,” lost his legs in an auto accident in 1972. “I’d been an actor before (the accident),” Byrnes says, “but the career had been at low tide. The loss of my legs made me sit up and say, ‘Hey, man, you have a life to lead!’ At the time, you never saw actors who were disabled. Acting still was my dream, but I put it on the back burner and made my living as a musician.” (Byrnes sings and plays guitar with his own touring blues band.) Finally, an acting audition came along.
In “Wiseguy,” Byrnes runs a high-tech communications center for the Organized Crime Bureau. That he does so from a wheelchair is totally beside the point. “We don’t pound people over the head with it,” he says. “I’m extremely able to do a lot of things. It’s not a plot device. Nobody feels sorry for me. The point we try to make is that I don’t have to depend on a lot of people. They depend on me.”
Nor is a little in-house humor amiss. “In one episode,” Byrnes says, “I’ve put on my prostheses. The McPike character sees me from behind and pulls a gun. I yell, ‘Hey, it’s me, Frank!’ He puts up the gun. ‘Jeez,’ he says, ‘I didn’t recognize you. You’re so tall!’ ”
