Kym Of All Trades - an article by Big Bear Grizzly November 10 2014

Kym Murphy is a renaissance man. Murphy doesn’t walk around reciting Shakespeare and he doesn’t spend time marveling at Michelangelo. Murphy is too busy for that.

Murphy brews beer. He makes art from hollowed dried gourds, and when Murphy isn’t too busy he writes treatments for movies. All that in a day’s work.

Murphy’s love for art began as a youngster. “I was an only child, so I was always inventing things or inventing games to entertain myself,” he said. He still entertains himself shaping gourds into art.

Murphy discovered gourd art in Hawaii 10 years ago. His own creative juices began flowing and Murphy shaped gourds into unique designs, he said.

Murphy buys the gourds in a market down the hill and dries them in the crawl space under his house. The gourds cure and can be carved like a soft wood, Murphy said.

Murphy’s gourd art includes his galaxy in a bowl design that uses light, painted stars and planets to simulate a solar system. He made a Mickey Mouse mask out of a gourd, which earned him entry into the Disney Art Show in October.

Murphy has spent a lifetime being creative. After working at an animal hospital Murphy pursued a career in marine biology. His career took him from Sea World in San Diego and Ohio to a career with Disney. While working as a set designer on the movie “The Deep” in 1974, Murphy got an idea for a ride at Epcot Center.

“We were building a large underwater sound stage,” Murphy recalls. Looking over the set he thought about how the sound stage could be used for a pavilion at what was to become Epcot Center at Walt Disney World. Murphy approached Disney and began working with the imagineers on the Living Seas ride at Epcot Center.

Murphy spent close to 30 years working for Disney before retiring to his home in Moonridge. Retirement left Murphy with idle time so he took up some more hobbies.

“I saw these beer kits in Butcher’s Block last year,” Murphy said. He brought a kit home and tried his hand at brewing beer. The first batch was a cool crisp pale ale. Murphy’s concoction was a combination of recipes in the kit’s instruction manual and home ingenuity. “I mixed the recipe with a little clover honey,” he said. The result was great beer, he said.

My son and a beer-making friend of his loved the first batch of beer, Murphy said. The second batch didn’t go too well.

“Beer making is such a precise art, you can’t breeze through it,” Murphy said. He doesn’t know whether he added too much of one ingredient or didn’t sterilize the equipment, but the beer was bad.

Murphy didn’t get discouraged. He went back to work on his next beer Murphy’s Mahogany Ale. The dark beer turned out great, he said. Murphy is hooked on beer making.

In a year Murphy has brewed an Oktoberfest style beer he call Murphanbreau and an India Pale Ale style beer. Beer making is a good excuse for Murphy to invite his son to Big Bear to enjoy football and barbecue, he said.

When Murphy isn’t shaping gourds or watching over his beer kettle, he is working on one of two movie treatments. Murphy is tight-lipped about the plots, but said one is a mystery. Murphy’s background in science may not lead people to think of him as a storyteller, he said. But at Disney everyone from the marketing department to the engineers present their ideas in story format, he said.

Murphy balances all three of his hobbies with consulting for Disney. When does he sleep? Murphy laughed at the question. “I am more content when I stay busy,” he said.

Contact reporter Brian Charles at 909-866-3456, ext. 134 or by e-mail at briancharles@bigbeargrizzly.net.

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