Signs

While at the dog park yesterday, I met a woman whose husband hand-painted billboards for a living all over south Florida. His specialty was the coppertone girl--you know, the one whose dog is tugging on her bathing suit. His specialized skills became obsolete with the rise of mass-produced digitized and vinyl billboards.

Old hand-painted signs, like the one in the photo I snapped from a building in Beatrice, Nebraska, have always intrigued me. I am impressed by the large-scale format, the texture of the brick, the lack of transfer techniques, and the danger of the job. Although I have no idea what the farmer originally looked like, I can't help but wonder if it has become more beautiful with time. For more information on billboards and their history, check out how billboards are made.

While painting the nursery mural a few weeks ago, I tried to channel one of my favorite artists, Margaret Kilgallen, whose murals were inspired by hand-painted signs.

For a visual feast of hand-painted signs of the world, check out this flickr set.

True Love = Clean Plate Club

Jack Sprat would eat no fat

His wife would eat no lean

And so between the two of them

They licked the platter clean.

I love Lucienne Day’s interpretation of this classic symbiotic tale on a dish towel. Day reduces the form of Jack and his wife to simple geometric shapes and patterns. She further emphasizes form with colored blocks left-of-center, allowing heads and appendages to break free of the borders. Jack’s spindliness is restated with a thin grey rectangle. His portly wife (unfortunately nameless but appearing unaffected.---happy even) receives a tangerine square. Their relationship is symbolized when their representative colors intertwine on one single dinner plate. Happy relationships are usually represented by a clichéd heart. I love how Day uses a dinner plate as an unconventional symbol of love between a chubby lady and her balding man. Jack shrugs as if to say, “whatever works!”

I first became aware of British textile artist Lucienne Day when visiting the Colorado Springs Fine Art Center exhibition, "Designing Women of Postwar Britain." For more information on this exhibition, visit the website here.