Flecks of Holiday Paint

Rory Fleck learned to paint holiday themes on store windows from his uncle. Now he’s dabbing greens, reds and whites of acrylic latex on store windows himself. And he gets to spend the time working together with his girlfriend, Monica Bortz, who says this is her first year painting.

She’s more of a photographer, she says, but Fleck showed her the ropes of window painting. She concedes that at first she was a little sketchy, but has the hang of it now. Fleck said he’s painted the windows of around 25 businesses so far this season, all through metro Detroit. This is the first season he’s done the windows for Champion House, at the corner of Fourth Avenue and Liberty Street, where The Chronicle caught the pair of painters in action.

Fleck says that his approach has actually evolved since he first started. Now he focuses on giving the set of windows as a whole a more coherent feel, and strives for symmetry. As an example, check out the snow bridge in the middle window of the set of three closest to Fourth Avenue.

The basic rate is $50 per window, with extra swirls negotiated on a case-by-case basis. How do you get your store window painted? If we’d waited until Rory and Monica had finished, we would have seen him paint the phone number in the corner of one of the windows: 248.996.0743.