3-D facsimiles

Company invites customers to indulge their imaginations

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Las Vegas resident Chris Vranian is founder of RockandRollGallery.com, a Web-based company that sells photographs of famous musicians. His wife, Claire Jane Vranian, has been doing special makeup effects in movies for about 12 years.

Perhaps it is fitting that their first collaboration as business partners was something that involved both fields -- special effects and music.

Their 6-month-old company Recre-Art produced four life-sized sculptures from the waist up of heavy metal icon Ozzy Osbourne, Guns n' Roses guitarist Slash, 1960s rock legend Jimi Hendrix, and Aerosmith vocalist Steven Tyler, all of which were done for the Rainbow Bar & Grill, 4480 Paradise Road.

The sculptures emerge from the wall behind the bar, with the likenesses striking the rock stars' most well known poses.

Those sculptures, on permanent display at the establishment, represent just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what Recre-Art is hoping to create for future customers.

"Your imagination is the only thing stopping you because we can create such a wide range of things," Claire said.

Ideas include having a life-sized sculpture of a sports hero in a family game room, or sculpting a fairy in a child's room with the same face as a customer's child.

"We could create a set from one of their favorite movies in their rooms," Chris said.

Claire also mentioned a row of Greek gods in an entryway or yard sculpted so that their faces resemble the faces of the people living in the house.

The company also can preserve wedding days for people by making life-sized sculptures of the couple, complete with their actual wedding clothing.

"This is for the person who has everything, with an imagination," Chris said.

Claire especially is used to getting requests right out of people's imaginations. She and artist Gary Tunnicliffe run their special effects company, Two Hours in the Dark, Inc., in Los Angeles. They have created special effects for almost 40 movies, including "Sleepy Hollow," "Blade," and five of the "Hellraiser" movies.

Essentially, whatever the movie makers ask she and her colleagues to make, they make.

In "Exorcist: the Beginning," the script called for a panel of butterflies to come to life and start flapping their wings. Instead of creating the image digitally, her company created a panel of animatronic butterflies. She could do the same or similar for Recre-Art customers.

"So if somebody wanted a bird in a cage, we could make them a fake bird that could move and tweet," Claire said.

The Vranians still keep a condominium in Los Angeles, but they live in Las Vegas the majority of the time. They knew they wanted their new business to be based in Las Vegas and moved here a year ago.

"This is the perfect place -- people have money and they love things larger than life," Chris said.

The sculptures are made of silicone, not wax like the creations at Madame Tussauds museums. Madame Tussauds offers a service to create customized sculptures for customers as well, but the Vranians said their way is different.

For one thing, it is less expensive, they said. Sculpture orders for individual customers start at $300,000 for the full Madame Tussauds treatment, complete with a trip to the company's London studios. Recre-Art sculptures start at $6,000 for a life-sized bust and climb to $85,000 for a life-sized, full-body sculpture. The cost will differ greatly based on the scale and intricacy of the project.

The Vranians are willing to make sculptures based on photos alone. But patrons can request the creative team take measurements or make an actual cast of the subject if they want it to be more precise. Recre-Art staff can visit a customer's home to take care of such details, or the customer can go to the business' studio in Los Angeles.

The Vranians joke about the possible applications of having a virtual body double made of silicone.

"We could go to Wolfgang Puck and say, 'If you want to be in all your restaurants at the same time, we can do it,' " Chris said.

Others have speculated on the narcissistic applications.

Soon, after the sculptures at Rainbow were unveiled, tabloids reported that celebrities like Paris Hilton were ordering statues of themselves and that Osbourne had requested the statue of himself that hangs at the establishment.

That's not true, the Vranians said. They said they know Rainbow owners Bob and Jerry Greenberg, who commissioned the sculptures. Chris said he did in fact send a photo of the sculpture to each of the musicians portrayed, with the exception of Jimi Hendrix, and obtained their permission before unveiling the statues.

If Osbourne or anyone else requests a personal reproduction, or anything else that could be rendered in the silicone medium, the Vranians said they are ready to create it.

"It's vanity at its finest," Chris said. "It's just decadence. If you want something over the top, just call us."

For more information, log on to www.recre-art.com or call 893-1076.