People

Living in the Moment

Montclair Artist Grbich Puts Himself Out There

    He’s a cross between the Energizer Bunny and Fred Astaire. At 75, Oakland artist Michael Grbich gets a charge out of high-profile stunts—like his tap dance, last fall, across the Golden Gate Bridge.
    “I’m thinking of doing the Brooklyn Bridge next,” he says, “if I can line up some sponsors.” Dr. Scholl’s and Geritol come to mind, but Grbich would probably rather have Nike. “I may look my age,” he laughs, “but I sure don’t act it.”
    Sporting spandex shorts and a tank top, his silver hair tucked under his sports cap, Grbich is living proof that 75 is the new 55. “I run, tap dance, lift weights, play tennis and work on my art,” says Grbich, reciting his schedule for a typical week.
    His tap-dancing foray on the legendary span was a twinkle-toed dance that included kicks, twirls and show-biz style kisses blown to family and friends. A blizzard of confetti punctuated his performance and the party-like approach he takes to life. “There’s so much doom and gloom these days, I just wanted to lighten things up a bit. Say yes to life.”
    But then Grbich has always looked at the world through rose-colored glasses. When fire swept through the Oakland hills in 1991, Grbich lost his home. It was a house he’d built by hand using recycled materials. A recent widower (his wife, also an artist, had died the previous year), he took his kids to the smoldering site and said, “What can we learn from this?”
    “I now have a better-built house,”  he admits, “with a better view, better neighbors and more diversity. I could go on and on about how I benefited from that loss.”
    Always the optimist, Grbich is a bit of a town character in Montclair. He starts each day with a cup of coffee at the local donut shop. Then, like clockwork, he moves to the benches outside Royal Ground and Starbucks. “I learn so much from sitting on benches,” he laughs, quoting the famous line about the wise person who listens when they’d rather be talking. Grbich holds court in the mid-morning sun, amused at what passersby must think. “They probably wonder, ‘Does that guy do any work or anything?’ ”
    But Grbich is just ramping up. He’ll head to his studio to work on his paintings, which have been shown at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum and other prominent places. A master of multi-media art, he often uses discarded junk in his pieces—like the legs of an ironing board he fashioned into the Eiffel Tower. “A lot of my work is whimsical, and I really try to look at life and say let’s not take anything too seriously.”
    To that end, he’s a risk taker—someone who’s only comfortable when he’s out of his comfort zone. His heroes are people who live in the moment, with the spontaneity of a child.
    Stretched across two rooms of his house is a tight wire, about 14 feet long, in front of a picture window that looks out on the Bay. Grbich makes 10 trips a day across that wire—chin up, standing like a ramrod with his eyes straight ahead. “It’s a real head trip for me,” he says. “Like meditation.” He figures he’s crossed 15,000 times in the last four years.
    But his hero has done even more with the sport. Performance artist Phillipe Petit walked across a tight wire between New York City’s Twin Towers in 1974. Thirty-one years later, Grbich tracked Petit down and took a lesson from him in the Catskill Mountains.
    “You have to put yourself out there,” he reflects. “It’s all about facing your fears.”
    Grbich teaches his seven grandkids to walk on the tightrope. Two of them are getting pretty good at it, and his dream is to have all of them on it at once. It’s just one more goal for a guy who thrives on putting himself out there.
    He looks at his contemporaries, in an age when seniors seem to be more active. “People my age are running marathons,” he says. But it’s not just about exercise and taking care of yourself. It’s about overcoming adversity and, in doing so, reaching deep into your belief system.
    Grbich admits he could have made a fool of himself on the Golden Gate Bridge that day. Police could have shut the stunt down, or he could have been hurt. “You just do it,” he says with a look of determination that dissolves into a mischievous grin. The smile makes you wonder what he’s cooking up next.