Work as night club manager for the Playboy Club in San Francisco? Check. Become the personal chef for a sitting United States President? Check. Rubbed elbows with the likes of Jim Carey and Robin Williams while working on big budget Hollywood films? Double check.

Odin Oldenburg seems to have ticked off every box on a bucket list many can only dream of.

The former digital set designer who worked for the likes of Disney during his eclectic career now calls Port Townsend home. Nowadays he creates digital fine art paintings with his computer utilizing skills he used to help launch the computer-generated imagery trend of the early 1990s.

When he paints, Oldenburg wants to tell a story.

“To me, painting is not a gimmick,” he said. “It is not a fad. I want them to be something a person can have a personal experience with in their home or business, and something they can share with their friends.”

Most people aren’t in the market to buy a painting, he said. They buy a painting because it stops them in their tracks.

Oldenburg, a Buddhist, relies on three basic principles to live his life and create his art -- symplicity, patience and compassion.

“Put the time into it and be patience because spirit works on a different (level),” he said. “I don’t care whether you are a budhist or believe in God. You have to be patient.”

He also believes in living for others selflessly.

“We are here to make other people’s lives easier or to help them how we can,” Oldenburg said. “It is very selfish to think that way, that we are here for ourself.”

The principles shine through in Oldenburg’s paintings, which his wife, Katherine Kane, said are hard to distinguish from paintings that are drawn on canvas.

After he retired, Oldenburg bought a lot of painting equipment and then realized how much it was going to cost to get all the parts he wanted, said Kane, a porcelain artist.

“Then, the lightbulb went on and he realized that he had the equipment he needed.”

The computer programs he uses offer different styles and types of brushes, papers and media, Kane said.

“He can combine watercolor, pastels, oils acrylics sometimes all in the same painting.”

Honed in Hollywood

From 1983 to 1989, Oldenburg worked as computer 3D specialist at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California. In 1990, he became a 3D set designer for various movies. The first was “Toys,” which starred Robin Williams. It came out in 1992.

He went to work on the movie after getting a call from production designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti, who had won an Academy Award in 1987 in the category “Best Art Direction” for “The Last Emperor.”

“Toys was a beautiful movie visually, but it didn’t do very well” in the box office, Oldenburg said.

Still, Oldenburg learned a bunch of movie magic while on set, he said.

“There was a lot of camaraderie and brainstorming,” Oldenburg said. “I was never treated like a newcomer in the business, but as a new guy who had a bag full of tricks. How can we use that? I was a little ahead of my time.”

Those tricks would serve him well as he went on to work on productions including “Jingle all the Way,” “Batman and Robin,” “The Truman Show,” “Almost Famous,” “Minority Report,” “The Hulk” and “Memoirs of a Geisha.”

Jim Carey was “absolutely nuts,” Oldenburg said, but Robin Williams “was even nuttier.”

Oldenburg returned to working for Disney in 1996 and retired from the company in 2010.

Turning back time

Before his life in Hollywood, Oldenburg was just another kid from California. After attending Cerritos College in Norwalk, California, Oldenburg attended Chouinard Art Institute of Los Angeles with a scholarship awarded by Disney.

“It was the number one arts and craft school and most all the teachers were in the industry, so you were learning from professionals. Well, I didn’t do much with it.”

After graduating, Oldenburg moved to San Francisco in 1967 and became a bartender.

One of his regulars was a jeweler, and after striking up a friendship, Oldenburg became an apprentice working on gold jewelry. He moved in with his mentor in Haight-Ashbury, a district of San Francisco, during the peak of the hippie movement.

“I could walk down to the park,” Oldenburg said. “It was only three blocks away. Iron Butterfly, Jefferson Airplane - all these people were playing for free, putting on concerts. It was pretty amazing.”

At about that same time, Oldenburg took a job at the Playboy Club.

“I had a pretty good lifestyle there,” he said.

But the rolling stone decided to move on, eventually landing at Lake Tahoe where he went to work on the ski slopes. That job eventually lead him to Vale, Colorado where he became a sous chef.

“Gerald Ford used to come in, and his family, and we were all cleared by the security,” he said.

One day, Oldenburg got a call from his chef, who asked if he was interested in being a personal chef for the president for a week or two because the regular chef was out sick.

“I just thought he was bsing me, so I hung up,” Oldenburg said.

It turned out not to be a joke, and Oldenburg served Ford for the next two weeks.

“They left and came back four or five months later and they asked me to come back again.”

The Ford family was very welcoming to Oldenburg, he said.

“It wouldn’t sound realistic to say they treated me like family, but they did. They were really kind to me.”

President Ford, after losing his bid for reelection, hired Oldenburg on as his personal chef.

Oldenburg moved with the family to their compound in Rancho Mirage, California.

“I was actually staying in Jack’s room because he was hardly ever home, until I got my own place,” Oldenburg said.

John “Jack” Gardner Ford was the former president’s second son.

“I met a lot of people while I was there, but I had no aspirations to become a celebrity chef,” Oldenburg said.

Still, Oldenburg met plenty of A-list celebrities during his stint at the Ford house including Bob Hope and Jackie Gleeson, he said.

Problem was, Oldenburg never had a day off.

The rolling stone hit the road again. One day, while working at the Ritz Carlton, he said he had an epiphany. He realized his true calling was art when he found an ad for a trade school about graphic arts.

He called and took an aptitude test. He was accepted.

“I had a job before I even finished that class,” Oldenburg said.

At the firm, Oldenburg designed ads for Gatorade, Honda and Suzuki, he said.

Later he started designing 3D images of home plans for architects on a Mac II.

He said he drank a lot of Jolt in those days.

“Its like Coke but I would get a lot more wired from it,” he said.

Oldenburg brought a new approach to the industry, he said.

Whereas before a painter would be contracted to paint a building, for about $10,000, to present to the public, Oldenburg was able to render complete interactive 3D models allowing a true representation of a conceived structure, even allowing the viewer to virtually stand on the 20th floor and see out to the horizon.

He called the technique “previsualization.”

That technique would lead to a phone call from Ferdinando Scarfiotti and a long career in Hollywood.

For more information about Oldenburg’s art, visit https://www.artbi-o.com