Mark your calendars!
9 January, 2011
Just put together postcards for our upcoming arty show, next month!
We’re calling it Genuine Authentic Hand Painted Signs, and I’ll try to toss together some word salad this week, to explain how we’re hoping the show might perhaps comment on the ways in which we’re willing accomplices in efforts to communicate authenticity via the painting of signs by hand. Or something like that.
I developed the center emblem after flipping through SF State’s gallery of union symbols, mentioned a few months back, in Draplin‘s blog. I think we might make some stickers and/or buttons out of it, too. I like it. Hell, I’m even thinking of a tattoo…
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So cool. Thanks for everything you do to keep hand lettering alive.
Make it into a rubber stamp
and maybe some 1″ round buttons!
Yeah, those ideas are in play. We don’t do too many signs on paper, but I imagine I could use the stamp like a chop in Chinese calligraphy…
It would be a fun logo to letterpress for a postcard for the show. Let me know if you would be interested, I can do custom designs, and could do it for trade
Also, have you ever thought of leading a sign painters union? all 40 of us would probabley join..
Oof, yeah… We’ve brought up letterpressing postcards amongst ourselves a few times since our show last year. I might, in fact, be the stick-in-the-mud that ends up saying, “y’know, can I just concentrate on designing the hand painted signs, and leave that to someone else?”. Or maybe all of us here are that stick-in-the-mud. But I know we’re interested. And maybe you’re that someone else?
However, these postcards are already on order, and I’m already more inclined to focus now on what I’ve yet to produce for the gallery walls, than on what I’ve yet to do to promote it. I’ll bring it up in the shop, anyway.
Vis-à-vis leading a sign painters’ union, I’m pretty sure there’s already a sign makers’ union around, if not specifically geared toward painters. Also, I’m already involved in management, such as it is, so I might have to be exempted from union leadership candidacy.
My whole reply has me suddenly feeling so curmudgeonly…
Musing on unions makes me think of being stuck in procedures and paying dues.. so were probabley better off keeping on the side of fine art marketing than industrialized catagorized work with overly structured organization.
Your reply left me searching the google bar for some definitions! Well said, though it may be the stress of a show coming that is making you feel stubborn and cankerous.. that’s how my wife explained my temperment to me when reflecting on the days before the last few shows I was in..
There IS a sign painters union in San Francisco, with a long and rich history.
Union Local 510, Sign & Display! I have been a member for 20 years.
With the decline of unionized sign shops, in San Francisco, the majority of the members now work on Trade Shows and Expositions, a few of the older members still have the traditional skills to do hand lettering, paint signs by hand, and do gold leaf. Some worked on billboards, before the era of digital signs.
The benefits are a big plus! Interested in being organized? Call them!
Cool! I’ll have to bring it up with my crew, see how they feel about it. Since, I guess, I’m “management”, I don’t know if I qualify, personally…
So, how come a Sign & Display union doesn’t have a nifty emblem to show in that library linked above?
Regardless–I’m happy to find, atop their website (for the moment anyway), the news that OccupySF is “planning an art construction day”, tomorrow, Sun, 20 Nov, looking for help from 8-1pm. A couple of us visited on a couple of Saturdays last month, with brushes and paint, but I haven’t had time to get down there in recent weeks, and this sounds like a fine opportunity to drop in again!
My few personal contacts within the realm of “old timey sign painters” in SF, haven’t mentioned anything to me about a union–maybe ’cause they’re all self-employed? I’ll look into it, see what’s what. Thanks!
Hi Damon,
I posted about your show on my blog. I’ll try to make it on Thursday evening. Take care!
http://www.weloveartanddesign.com/2011/02/new-bohema-signs-art-show-this-thursday.html
-Beth
Oh, terrific–thanks, Beth! Hope to see you there.
http://coltbowden.blogspot.com/2011/02/new-bohemia-sign-painters-art-show-this.html
Blogged it, heading out tomorrow for the drive from Salt Lake to San Fran! Excited to see it and meet you guy’s.. hope it goes both way’s
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