THE SUNDAY PROFILE : Dream Works : Raul Rodriguez Puts His Imagination on Wheels and Floats It Down Colorado Boulevard for All the World to Admire

Raul Rodriguez is reliving a moment of beauty, the kind of rush that comes when you bump into an old friend, when a scent rekindles a buried memory, a song reminds you of romance.

This moment, triggered by the hammering and welding of a gargantuan float he has designed for Monday’s Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, takes him back.

Thirty-six years back.

It is 1959. A shy 15-year-old is being pushed by friends onto a stage at Santa Fe Springs High School to accept a trophy as the winner of a float design contest. His drawing, “Snowbound,” inspired by a John Greenleaf Whittier poem, depicts a great north wind puffing over monstrous, majestic icecaps. Months later, Raul and his family camp overnight on Colorado Boulevard, warming themselves with hot chocolate, waiting for “Snowbound” to drift by.

“Early in my life, I got to see my imagination become reality,” Rodriguez says, snapping back to 1995 to face a new work in progress, appropriately titled “More Splendid Than a Dream,” at an Azusa float-making company.

He stares at the 35-foot-by-55-foot hulking shell, a carousel of wood, wire, rods, motors and a hydraulics system that will make it go up and down. On New Year’s Day, it will carry more than 40,000 pounds of hardware, people and, of course, flowers: marigolds, chrysanthemums, carnations, roses, lavender and gold pompoms, and Madame Pompadour orchid petals imported from Bangkok.

The ethereal creation is one of 16 that Rodriguez has designed for the 107th annual parade, themed “Kids’ Laughter & Dreams.” To date, his sketches have come to life in more than 350 floats over 30 years. A love for history, art, travel and people contribute to a signature style--renowned for its intricate detail--that has garnered more than 250 awards in all 22 categories, making Rodriguez the most decorated designer in parade history.

“I remember as a kid back then how I took the bus all the way to uptown Whittier and going to the library, spending my whole Saturday researching, reading about history and thinking, thinking, thinking about my design for the contest,” he recalls.

Not much has changed.

Rodriguez’s Saturdays are still packed year-round with work revolving around his craft: poring over his vast collection of art and history books and thinking, thinking, thinking about future designs.

But not just for floats. While designing for the parade pays the bills, Rodriguez, who formed RRR Design in the late 1970s, has a long-standing association with casinos. He designed the flamingo facade for the Flamingo Hilton in Las Vegas and the clown for Circus Circus in Reno, among other projects. He also created interiors and exteriors for the Harley Davidson chain of stores and restaurants, set stages for the 1984 World’s Fair in New Orleans, and was a consultant for the 1984 Summer Olympic Games.

All that artistry bought the bachelor from Boyle Heights a Hancock Park manse that he transforms into a winter wonderland every holiday season, inside and out, with float leftovers of behemoth bunnies, romping reindeer and sleighs the size of Chevy Suburbans.

But his roots--and devotion--to his old neighborhood is unwavering.

He’ll insist that you try the carnitas at Tepeyac restaurant, drive you past the church where his parents were married, and introduce you to the folks at the Los Angeles School of Music and Art or the Boyle Heights YMCA, where he is a donor, frequent visitor and hero to many kids. They come to see his slide show of floats and hear him lecture about his love for art.

“Raul is very proud of his Hispanic heritage,” says good friend Tim Gogan. “He’s out there in the community giving, not just talking about giving. The kids love him because he too has this childlike wonder about him.”

Says another friend, Sharon Stanley: “He is passionate about everything. He lives the life that he draws.”

This year, Rodriguez sketched himself and his hyacinth-blue macaw, Roxie, into a design called “Making Dreams Come True.” Indeed, this designer of dreams has realized many.

As a youngster growing up with sisters Irene and Teresa in East Los Angeles, Norwalk and Santa Fe Springs, Rodriguez fantasized about traveling the world, immersing himself in other cultures. On a rare relaxed afternoon at the home he shares with his cousin, Dena Cortez, her two cats and his three macaws, he recalls the places his imagination took him. Dancing with dragons in the Orient, dining at the palace of Versailles, soaking up the rays on palm tree-laden islands, frolicking in the snow.

As an illustrator for the U.S. Army in Taipei, Rodriguez would get his first real taste of adventure. Later, he journeyed to Europe and Asia--Japan, Thailand, Indonesia and its islands of Sumatra, Borneo and Java--where he found inspiration for float designs that have often saluted explorers.

Among them are Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, Hernando Cortez and Genghis Khan, which required Rodriguez to wear John Wayne’s 25-pound gladiator mini of leather and metal from the 1955 movie “The Conqueror.”

Rodriguez reminisces once again.

It is 1987. Rodriguez’s parents, Ruben and Natalie, are poised on a white carnation-covered swan float titled “Sent With Love.” It captures the President’s Trophy and his parents, surrounded by colossal cherubs, win the hearts of parade-goers.

At his home filled with polished crystal, baroque-style furnishings and decorated in Rockefeller Plaza holiday pizazz, Rodriguez reaches for the last photograph taken of his parents together.

“My mother died five months after this,” in 1989 at age 67, he says, stretching for other photos: one of his mother in a designer ball gown, her hair in a bubble flip; his father, at 19, in military garb. Ruben Rodriguez died two years after his wife, but the couple “got to partake in a lot of things that I did,” their son says.

“Because they had such love for all people, my dad and mom always expressed to us kids to know and to understand all cultures. When we moved to the Norwalk area, it was because my dad wanted us to have a liberal education and to always be open to other kinds of thinking, be it religion, be it politics, be it community.”

Rodriguez recalls that as early as his preschool years, his parents recognized his talent and helped him develop it. “My dad always told me ‘I was blessed with a God-given talent.’ ” Rodriguez says he got it from his mother, also an artist, and his great-uncle Galileo Cortez, “a phenomenal painter during the turn of the century” whose works were collected by California’s early land-grant families.

Rodriguez’s father, a sheet-metal worker at the Long Beach shipyard, taught him to work hard and to sign his name proudly. That’s advice he follows and passes along. “Aren’t they pretty?” he says, holding his parents’ photo.

He then turns to a scrapbook brimming with more photos of family, friends and supporters through the decades. Barbara Eden, Lily Tomlin, Milton Berle, former Rose Bowl queens, the gang from the daytime soap “The Bold and the Beautiful,” Muppet genius Jim Henson--all members of the Raul--or as most pronounce it, Rool--fan club.

Jack French, executive director of the Tournament of Roses Assn. and a friend for more than 20 years, is another member. “Raul has grown up with the parade and has made tremendous contributions in terms of his design work,” he says.

Says Martin Ortiz, the first Latino, in 1970, to serve on the Tournament of Roses Assn.: “Raul is an inspiration to the youth of the community, particularly the Latino youth. He is to float designing what Walt Disney is to Disneyland.”

Already, Rodriguez, who has degrees from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and Cal State Long Beach, where he specialized in drawing, painting and illustration, is designing for the 1997 parade. Actually, he started two months ago, even though the parade’s theme won’t be announced until mid-January.

“I’ve always had a vivid imagination,” he says, “maybe because I’m a purveyor of so many things.”

He loves bookstores and libraries. While driving, he often stops to study the lines and patterns of exquisite architecture. He collects reproductions of Faberge eggs and antique jewelry boxes bought at the Rose Bowl Flea Market. He hauls rusty chandeliers away from estate sales and transforms them into crystalline splendor.

He admits to being a perfectionist. Before heading out one recent day, he inspects his emerald green Town Car for bird poop, spots a speck, and reaches in the trunk for paper towels and Windex. Also on hand are bags of various nuts for Roxie--who will accompany him on a day of parade-related appearances--and four North Beach Leather jackets from his collection of 10 in various colors, some with swirling designs, one with U.S.A. plastered on a sleeve.

“I always call myself the end-of-the-year celebrity,” he says jokingly, then wishes he hadn’t.

“It’s just that I’m fairly anonymous throughout the year” until float-decorating time hits Southern California.

After Thanksgiving, Rodriguez finds himself in demand to speak at luncheons, parties and community centers about his work.

How does he come up with ideas, year after year?

“Think big,” he says, adding that ideas come from everywhere: a print on a blouse, a pattern on a tie, a motif on a plate, a conversation with a friend, a paragraph in a history book.

Jim Hynd, vice president and floral director of Fiesta Parade Floats, is one of three float-building companies that hires Rodriguez annually to design for his clients. Before he begins sketching, Rodriguez and the float builders meet with clients to determine design direction. He then does his homework before submitting at least three drawings for consideration. The one selected may cost from $50,000 to $250,000 and take up to six months to complete, says Cortez, who doubles as Rodriguez’s business manager.

“Raul makes the same amount of money as any other designer in the parade,” Cortez says, even though he wins more prizes. He and she both declined to say how much he earns for a design.

Of Rodriguez’s winning ways, Hynd says, “Raul always comes up with stuff that may seem impossible to do. I say, ‘Raul, you’re out of your mind.’ ”

But with a little bit of tweaking and toning down, magic, Rodriguez style, is made.

“I think in terms of sweeps of design,” Rodriguez explains. “A theme or a scheme of things, interesting piecework, visually lyrical pieces that sing imagination. I’d rather do that than doodle someone’s business card. It’s just easier for me.”

The pressure to succeed is always there, he says.

“But I’m happy with the things I’ve accomplished. I think all of us can strive to always do more because we don’t know how long this life is given to us.”

Rodriguez is thinking back again.

It is the early 1950s. His family is visiting his great-aunt Guadalupe Cortez at Rancho Los Amigos Medical Hospital in Downey, where she lived for more than 60 years. At age 30, she suffered a fall that led to a crippling arthritic and spinal condition, requiring round-the-clock care.

“The day I was born I was visiting her,” he says of his family’s commitment to spending every third Sunday with his aunt.

He vividly remembers the charming woman everyone called “Mom,” and how he’d wheel her onto the veranda to gaze out at a bird sanctuary. He remembers her courage, how she “did beautifully with less, without full use of the capacities we’re born with.” She died when he was 17.

“At a young age, I learned about compassion for people, respect for all people,” he says. These are the lessons he applies today, never taking anything for granted--least of all his gift, as he calls it. And always sharing the credit, especially come parade time when countless people help take his design from paper to processional.

Back at the Azusa float-building site, workers are rushing to meet deadlines. Rodriguez marvels at the progress. Overhead, sparks fly from a torch melding rods onto two 25-foot-tall cranes that will hover 50 feet in the air for China Airlines.

Across the lot, a dog sleeps on a float while its owner paints the head of a 40-foot-high mammoth macaw. Inside the warehouse, a sculptor with a warriorlike machete slashes away at a foam block the size of a freight elevator, shaping the menacing face of the giant for the “Jack and the Beanstalk” float that will carry models Vendela, Naomi Campbell and Kathy Ireland.

Rodriguez says he doesn’t have a favorite float. It’s always “the one I’m working on.”

But he does have a way of measuring his success with parade watchers.

“The minute I see a big, wonderful smile,” he says. “Oh, man, the feeling that comes over me when that happens is unbelievable.” He pauses for several long seconds. Roxie, on his shoulder, is calmly transfixed by the surrounding hubbub as Rodriguez turns to face the quartet of King Kong-sized floats coming together.

He is thinking about the future. About Monday’s parade. About those smiles.

For a few seconds, the explorer escapes into another moment of beauty.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Raul R. Rodriguez

Background: Born in Boyle Heights; now lives in Hancock Park.

Family: Bachelor, godfather to five children.

Passions: Collecting and reading art and history books; his three macaws, Roxie, Max and Windsor; hunting for treasures at flea markets; Mexican food.

On watching floats: “Besides flowers, I’d like for people to see the story on each one. I’m not just designing a float, but also a mood and a story whether it’s ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ or a fantastic flight on an elegant crane. Each float is like a parade within a parade, a thing of beauty that for a moment captures time and space on Colorado Boulevard--and hopefully rekindles a memory about a person, a trip, a place.”

On nurturing one’s talent: “The one thing that bugs me most of all is when I meet someone who I know has an incredible talent that he or she isn’t utilizing. They’re letting it slip away or lay dormant. I have respect for the person who is out trying to do something with that talent. What I’m saying is that laziness is not something I indulge in and neither should talented people.”

On his philosophy of life: “Experiment and explore. I’ve never been afraid. I believe in taking chances. And most of all, I believe in people.”