Pierpont Avenue, 2010: Staff and friends at McGrew Studios.
Photo: Rick Egan, The Salt Lake Tribune.
Core Group: An Artistic Bunch…
JENNIFER McGREW
Cutter-draper-pattern-maker, tailor & dressmaker, crew chief & shop management. Loooong history designing and building for theater, musicals, dance, mascots, corporate, film, tv and commercials. Other oddities include producer, promoter, professor & script developer. BA, MA, MFA.
$500 set monkey or day rate,
$600 design/build day rate
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm5263962/?ref_=nv_sr_1
http://jennifermcgrew.com/
ROBERT HIRSCHI
Tech guru, photography, videography, drone pilot, programming and applications plus VFX specialties including compositing, animations, blood, fire, water, magic, making things disappear and making things explode.
See some of Robert’s work HERE.
Animations, musical composition, mixing, soundtracks and editing. DaVinci Resolve, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, Disco Diffusion, Lucid Sonic Dreams XL, Blender, Unreal Engine, Marvelous Designer, ZBrush, iClone, Adobe Premiere, Aftereffects, HitFilm Express, Sony Vegas Pro, A-Frame, advanced Java, JavaScript, Jquery, PHP, CSS, HTML5, Python and naturally, WordPress. Robert is a developer for a variety of websites, McGrew Studios among them.
The consummate outsider artist and musician, one of Robert’s more recent youtube channels, BBGun, is populated with quarantine-era specialties featuring ‘Robert and the Clones’ as well as songs with his BBGun bandmates.
$500 day rate, or per-project bids for VFX, editing, animating, coding, databases, websites, etc.
https://www.youtube.com/@EvilToons-xp7mv
https://www.youtube.com/c/RobertHirschi
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4442489/?ref_=fn_nm_nm_30
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmvfvIJu7MFk8t3aPApC5Ng/videos
https://www.youtube.com/user/ranoblood/videos
https://www.youtube.com/user/NoBloodtoSpare/videos
CAROLYN RICHARDSON
Illuminated illustrations, captivating caricatures and fantastic costume renderings. Carolyn is a frequent guest artist at the corporate gatherings of Adobe, USANA, Lagoon, Young Living and many more who treat their employees and guests with her heirloom portraits. A production manager plus costume and props designer/technician, she also creates promotional illustrations for websites and media campaigns. Carolyn is a production manager and art director for Buie Entertainment plus an accomplished Salsa dancer.
$100 per hour charicatures rate or per-project bids for book projects, illustrations, costume renderings, etc.
https://www.instagram.com/carolynmrichardson/
https://www.facebook.com/carolyn.richardson.902
https://www.buieentertainment.com/
HRAEFN WULFSON
Pronounced “Raven” (it’s Anglo Saxon), is a fine artist, painter, producer and production designer. Nearly a decade working in Los Angeles on sets, props, miniatures and special effects for lots of commercials and a bunch of films you know and love including Holes, Windtalkers, The Alamo and more. Hraefn has spent a lifetime studying runes, their origins, their artistic representations and academic debates about them, and is currently in preproduction for a new program you’ll find fascinating (and possibly quite controversial) called The Rune Show.
$500 day rate
$600 on set or design day rate
https://www.hraefnwulfson.com
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1442084/?ref_=nv_sr_1
Hraefn Wulfson Linktree
CRIT KILLEN
Master creator of props and special effects for films you love including Blade Runner, Titanic and Beettlejuice. Crit taught screenwriting at UCLA/USC and production design at BYU and has consulted on scripts of 90+ Hollywood feature films. Crit currently teaches screenwriting at Utah Valley University. His career spanning 34 years has given him the opportunity to work on some eighty five motion pictures in production design and on another ninety some films behind the scenes, crafting stories and consulting on script and film structure.
$600 day rate
$700 on set or design day rate
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0453139/?ref_=nv_sr_1
DAVID POWELL
David specializes in fine art, storyboards and concept art plus is a master leather worker, armor designer and prop maker for live performances as well as motion picture spectacles including the films of Arrowstorm Entertainment. He is also a lead designer for Utah’s famous themed live attraction, Evermore. A craftsman specializing in industrial design and CAD applications, David’s work includes metalsmithing and fabrication for Badali Jewelry’s licensed specialties inspired by films and novels, to one-of-a-kind collectible ensembles for discriminating clients.
$500 day rate or per-project bids for concept art, storyboards, artisan leather work, etc.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm5800285/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cr47
https://www.instagram.com/powellartsworkshop/
A Brief History of McGrews
Updated 2/14/2016
In 2001, McGrews opened its doors to the public in downtown Salt Lake City.
From a modest 300 square foot commercial loft space, our workshops have expanded to a more than 3000 square foot storefront (and for particular projects – up to 10,000 feet of workspace and showroom). From its humble beginnings as a sole proprietorship, McGrews is now operated by several designers and their artisan staff, plus at least two college interns every semester.
The Pierpont Avenue storefront looked like this, below, in 2010, prior to a major remodel.
A neighborhood focal point on Salt Lake’s historic Pierpont Avenue since 2001, McGrews has added appeal and magic to the downtown area.
Our shop, along with our staff and friends have played host, formally and casually, to the many gallery strollers, tourists, photographers, journalists and adventurers who’ve perused the block’s interesting features.
As a cultural anchor, we’ve provided a hub for society’s movers. At special gallery events, meetings and impromptu get-togethers, celebrities, artists, composers, authors, chefs and politicians have congregated. Many citizens have stopped by over the years to chat about the news of the day and their current projects.
The personal and professional paths of many people have intersected and shifted course within our midst.
Clients and projects have included everyone and everything imaginable, from films and plays to political campaigns, dance productions and pets.
December 2015 ended with McGrews (plus 99% of Pierpont Avenue’s other tenants) moving out!
We moved nearly fifteen years worth of collected materials, tools, costumes, props and fixtures, and it was quite an ordeal! The historic building we occupied for so long was purchased earlier in the year by out-of-town investors who more than quadrupled the rents…. and thus goes the timeless tale of gentrification.
Our designers and crew are enthusiastic about our NEW location in Salt Lake’s Granary District.
Our new, larger space allows us to build larger productions plus host more guest designers, workshops and events.
Regardless of where we do the majority of our actual work (for some projects we rent extra warehouse space plus we’ll often take our work home with us), the view shared by everyone on our team is that each project and each performative event deserves excellence in its form and function, engineering and execution, tailoring and fit. That’s the way it is with this bunch.
Naturally, there are many good stories about how everyone met one another and decided to join forces. Jen, though, scolds that “collaboration” is the wrong word. “Collaboration,” she thinks, is something college students are forced to do in ‘group work.’ In the real world, she says, the discriminating and determined among us get to choose our associates and co-creators.
Jen oversees the costumes, tailoring and wearable elements of the business.
Hraefn (pronounced “Raven”) Wulfson oversees everything related to production design, sets, props, miniatures and special effects.
Both have long resumes in the entertainment world and both work in client relations as well as script development. They are tireless artistes who champion excellent form and function in the things they create and the projects/people they supervise.
On some occasions, they even wear costumes.
The shop gets its family name from Jennifer McGrew. She started sewing and building costumes as a youngster. Some forty plus years later, she still hasn’t been able to kick this habit.
