For More Than 25 Years, Fort Irwin VM Has Put His Artistic Mark on the Exchange

As a child, Ricardo Orfin would watch his father, an artist, at work. He observed how his father drew or painted pictures. Then he decided to give it a try himself.

“One day, he was working on an oil painting and I grabbed his paintbrushes and started painting stuff,” said Orfin, a visual merchandiser at Fort Irwin. “He looked at me like, ‘What are you doing? Those are very expensive.’

“But then he realized, ‘This is great, what you’re doing.’ He and my mom signed me up for some art classes and I started developing my artistic abilities.”

You can see how those artistic abilities developed if you visit Fort Irwin, where he sculpted a T-Rex that’s in the Exchange mall. Or at the Travis AFB Exchange, where there’s a mural of the storefront with a C-5 airplane flying low over the BX.

That’s just a sample of the 25-year-plus Exchange associate’s work. His artwork has graced other California exchanges, as well as Exchanges in New Mexico and Texas. He began doing the murals in 1999, but he had an earlier stint with the Exchange.

Fort Irwin Visual Merchandiser working on the T-rex sculpture that’s now in the Fort Irwin Exchange mall. “It’s 40 feet long, 13 feet high and almost 5 feet wide,” Orfin says. “The community is thrilled when they look at it.”

An artistic career takes off

In July 1993, Orfin began a year-and-a-half stint as a temporary visual merchandiser at the Travis AFB Exchange while he was taking art classes at Solano Community College in Fairfield, about 50 miles northwest of San Francisco.

After the temporary gig was over, Orfin began working at the Performing Arts Center in Fairfield. He helped out with props, lighting effects and signage. But his true talent was art, and when the opportunity arose, he designed a large mural for the Performing Arts Center.

“From that mural, I got the opportunity to start designing more murals for the City of Fairfield,” Orfin said. “And I started growing my artistic abilities around the Bay Area. I was even interviewed by the local newspaper.”

Chris Holloway, the general manager of the Travis AFB Exchange in 1999, was proud of the Exchange’s large meeting room, but thought it could use some brightening up. When he heard about Orfin’s work, he approached him with an idea. “We have a big training room with an empty wall,” Orfin recalls Holloway telling him. “We want to have a nice painting to give it some atmosphere.”

When Orfin went to the BX to look at the room, a large airplane flew right over the store. Immediately curious, he asked which airplanes at the base were the most popular and was told about the Lockheed-Martin C-5 Galaxy, a cargo plane that’s one of the largest aircraft in the world. He took a drive to get a closer look at one of the C-5s.

“I actually wound up in the airfield where the airplanes took off,” Orfin says. “I was still looking when I turned around and saw a big airplane coming straight at me. I said, ‘Oh, my God, what did I do?’ I drove back and as soon as the airplane took off, I said, ‘That’s it—that’s what I want to capture.’”

What he captured is still on the wall of the Travis training room (you can see a portion of it in the photo accompanying this Exchange Post story from February). People tell Orfin it looks three-dimensional. Some people, he said, spend more time looking at the mural than they do paying attention during meetings.

The Travis AFB Exchange mural that Ricardo Orfin painted in 1999. The mural led to a more than 25-year career at the Exchange.

Other GMs took notice, wondering why their stores didn’t have a mural like the one at Travis. Although Orfin had briefly worked for the Exchange a few years earlier, he was not an associate at the time.

“The regional vice president back then, Javier Serna, saw the mural at Travis and asked, ‘Who painted this?’ People told him, ‘He used to be an associate for the Exchange.’ ‘OK—call him back’,” Orfin recalled. “I got the chance to meet him and he told me he wanted me to paint other murals in the Western Region. I said, ‘Absolutely, sir.’”

That’s when Orfin was offered a job as a visual merchandiser.

Orfin’s second mural was at Edwards Air Force Base, where, Orfin says, General Manager Mark Neely showed him a huge wall and said, “What’s your plan?’

“I wanted to paint a B-2 Bomber with the space shuttle flying over Edwards,” Orfin says. “But I couldn’t see the dimensions or the perspective that I wanted to capture. I wanted to have an aerial view, where you were watching the airplanes from the top.”

He visited the NASA research facility at Edwards, where he was able to see some photos that included one with the view he was looking for. “There were aerial pictures of Rogers Dry Lake, where they do experiments flying airplanes,” Orfin said. “When I told them these were what I needed, they said, ‘OK—they’re yours.’ I took them home and started drawing the mural. You see she space shuttle flying, the B-2 bomber below it and then Rogers Dry Lake.”

He was a little puzzled when the mural was nicknamed “The Ghost Ship” and asked why people were calling it that.

“Because when you look at it from one perspective, and then you walk around, the space shuttle moves,” he was told. “And when you’re on the opposite wall, the space shuttle is directly facing you. How did you do that?”

Orfin, who hadn’t done it intentionally, didn’t really have an answer. “I went in and looked at it from different angles and thought, ‘Oh my God—they’re right.’”

Thinking big

Orfin went TDY to work on murals throughout California, as well as in Colorado, New Mexico and Texas. These days, he does fewer murals but he continues to be a creative visual merchandiser. Fort Irwin, where he’s been since 2005, is where he constructed the T-Rex.

“It’s 40 feet long, 13 feet high and almost 5 feet wide,” Orfin says. “The community is thrilled when they look at it. The biggest satisfaction for me is to see families’ reactions when they see it—their smiles, and the way it captures the imagination of the kids.’”

He also designed the Fort Irwin Exchange’s rock.

At Fort Irwin, a landmark called Painted Rocks recognizes the contributions of units that train at the Fort Irwin National Training Center. In 2022, the Fort Irwin Exchange was selected to receive a rock in honor of its continued support of the Fort Irwin community.

“It takes years for approval,” Orfin said. “Even the paint you use has to be approved. The size and what you’re going to do are strictly regulated. You have three options: 1) find a rock; 2) pick a rock from the area; or 3) build your own rock. To build your own rock, you have to use certain materials that don’t damage the environment.”

Orfin constructed a rock from wood, concrete and metal. It bears the Exchange’s motto, “We Go Where You Go,” in artwork created by the Exchange’s Corporate Communications and Brand Marketing team.

For the long-awaited grand opening of Fort Irwin’s Mojave Express in May, Orfin constructed a 12-foot-high, 7-foot-wide sculpture of the Exchange brand of two chevrons meeting (see photo at the top of this story). For the Exchange’s 129^th anniversary on July 25, he is working on another rock, this one 7 feet high, featuring the chevron logo and the Exchange

The flow of projects keeps him working at the Exchange.

“What I like about the Exchange is it changes constantly, giving you new ideas, new visions,” he says. “It’s a fast-paced environment. You think fast and ask fast. That’s why I’ve stayed so long at the Exchange—because I love it. I love the diversity also. You get to meet people from all over the world. It’s amazing to me.”

Visual Merchandiser Ricardo Orfin designed the Fort Irwin Exchange’s rock at Painted Rocks, a Fort Irwin landmark that recognizes the contributions of units that train at the Fort Irwin National Training Center. In 2022, the Fort Irwin Exchange was selected to receive a rock in honor of its continued support of the Fort Irwin community.