Episode 1: Hey! You Can’t Do It That Way

In this first episode, Sean discusses the mindset of sign painters and how creating self imposed rules can limit sign painters and designers as artists.

Transcription:

Coming to you from Star Studios in Denison, Texas, this is Coffee with a Signpainter, a weekly podcast hosted by sign painter, Sean Starr, that consists of interviews with other sign painters and some of the customers and characters Sean comes across while running his studio. I'd like to welcome you to the very first episode of Coffee with a Sign Painter. My name is Sean Starr. I've been, working as a sign painter and designer for over twenty five years. And, I realized in a conversation with a sign painter down in Austin, Texas named Gary Martin, a while back, that probably the most interesting part of my job is the conversations that I have with, some of the other people that, work in this craft as well as some of the customers I deal with and some of the occasional characters I meet in the daily operating of the studio.

So that was the whole idea behind getting this thing started. What I'd like to talk about today is, something based on a conversation recently I had with a different sign painter, named Roderick Treece out in San Diego, California area. And it's just this this mindset, that I I don't think is unique to sign painting. I think it's probably, transfers over into a lot of things, but it's this mindset of you can't do it that way, which I think especially in any, type of the arts or or design is just a really, it's a really confining way to view the world. You know, what I'm referring to is in in the different areas of sign painting, there's there's different specialties.

One of which is, gold leaf on glass work, reverse glass gilding. And there's kind of these factions within sign painting, that form over time where, you know, it's not a bad thing. It's just some people are just really drawn to working in a certain area, and so a lot of these guys get together and over time form different guilds and different associations where they share different techniques and different things about the history of that particular branch of the craft of sign painting, But I've run into this over the years, where there's, this mindset that if you are working within one of those areas and you break ranks and start to experiment or do something differently than what is accepted as the norm. Some people come really become really unglued with that. It really rocks their their little worlds, and I I really, you know, for myself, I've always kept an attitude that, you know, the one thing that really keeps working in a craft like this exciting and challenging and and fun is experimenting and trying different things and cross referencing things.

So for instance, with gold leaf on glasswork, there's the, there's a discipline if you would call it that called, probably butchering this, but ver iglomise, I believe is how they pronounce it, and this goes back to pre Roman times, and it's reverse gilding on glass and a variety of processes with etching and different things to get different effects, and, so as a sign painter that works a lot with gold on glass, I look at that and I cross reference and I say, oh, there's a little technique that might cross over into a sign job I'm working on and even looking at, some of the really old books. One of my favorite reads is the Vitruvius 10 books on architecture because it just when you see how others think and have thought in in the approach to design, it really broadens your own view and your own way of approaching things, and it encourages you to experiment. Obviously, hundreds or thousands of years ago, they didn't have access to a lot of the different materials and tools that we have today. So I can look back at the old stuff and say, okay, well, maybe if I try that concept with these tools or these materials, maybe that'll work or maybe it won't.

And so what we like to do and I've talked to many others that that do this as well is, you know, we'll do samples, and we'll stick them up on the wall for a while. I've got a sample here in the studio of something I did in San Francisco, probably seven, eight years ago now. And it was, you know, for the purpose of, a, seeing if I could do it, and, b, seeing how it would hold up. And, you know, it's it still looks like the day that it was executed. So I just am really focused on trying to not set up borders for myself as a designer or a sign painter so that, you know, it's always fresh.

It's always new and exciting. So that's, that's kind of an agenda for me, I guess, is just, once you start confining yourself and closing yourself off to a certain it has to be this way, then do you really do you cease to be an artist at that point? Are you at that point, just strictly a craftsman because you're just solely focused on the mechanical aspect of this is the correct way to apply gold leaf or to letter, you know, paint a letter or or do whatever. And, you know, that's something that, I I wanna discuss with some of our future guests is is how they view that. Because I I know from many conversations over the years that, it's either or, it seems.

It's that there there are those out there like, Chris DeBell. He's an Australian sign painter who's been working up in, Vancouver, British Columbia area for quite a while now. We we share that same sentiment, you know, experiment, and sometimes it doesn't work, and, that's okay. My my real measuring stick, I think, is and should be that, you know, does it does it perform? If if you paint someone's storefront and you're applying gold leaf and you've come up with a new way of applying it or or approaching it and it looks good and the client loves it and it's up there and it lasts year after year, then what's the problem?

If some of these with the mindset that you shouldn't veer off the so called accepted norm, you know, what what's the argument against that? I don't know. Are there rules? Are there rules in being an artist and and creating visual things that motivate and inspire and excite people? Should there be rules?

Outside of the technical aspects, I mean, obviously, you can't paint something on glass or on a board that, you know, you can't take a four by eight sheet of plywood and paint watercolors on it and stick it out in the rain and not have it drip. So yeah, that I guess would be a rule. That would be something you can't really break because it's it's gonna fail in its purpose, but on the aesthetic side or or on the technique side, it it doesn't matter? I don't think so. The purpose of of that sign is to to advertise, to, add color and flare to the neighborhood and to, you know, get the public to be able to interact with a little bit of art.

You know, you obviously, you know, art we have certain limitations as sign painters. We're not able to just, you know, go berserk, and there's always the sign code stuff to deal with in different communities, especially ones that wrote the entire sign code based on vinyl and digital, which is challenging as a sign painter to try to go in and talk to, city officials who have their whole mindset is everything has to fit in the box, which again, that ties in with what I'm talking about. You can't do it that way. I ran into this, last year. There's a community here in the Dallas area, small town that's located just North of Dallas that started this whole project with the client.

We did all of their branding, designed all of their signage. And, so the client takes all of the mock ups, at the stage where, you know, we're we're setting, everything up. Everything's scheduled. We're ready to go out there with some scaffolding and paint this large scale stuff on a brick building. An extra layer to it is the, the husband of the lady that hired us as a professional architect.

So, you know, these aren't people winging it. You know, these are people that know what they're doing. And, so they take the mock ups to the city, and they show them what we wanna do, which is they they've created a brand new building that looks old. It's brick structure. The architecture is is an older style, beautiful building.

And the whole concept from the beginning that we worked with them was that we would hand paint on the brick just like it would have been done, you know, fifty, sixty, hundred years ago. And, you know, that would tie the whole look of the building together. They even designated certain types of lighting so that it would look authentically vintage. And so they take it into the city, and the city says, oh, well, wait a minute. This has to be on plastic and have this lighting and all this technical stuff.

And the the husband, he's the architect, he's the one dealing with the city, and he says, well, no. We're we're doing it so that it fits within the style, so this is all gonna be paint. And the guy says, well, you can't do paint. And the architect says, well, why can't we do paint? That's how it was done for hundreds of years on these older buildings.

And this led to a constant back and forth that lasted for days between these two people. And the final verdict was that the artwork could not be executed on in paint because in the city code, it the only classification that they could find that would fit would be that sign painting on that building would qualify as graffiti. So that right there that killed that part of the project and and they had to switch gears and they had to go to their local fast signs or whatever type chain type business and get the plastic panel backlit sign with vinyl graphics and all that stuff. And it's all it's all tied in with that same mentality. You can't do it that way.

You you you can't approach it that way regardless of how well designed the artwork is or the concept is, you know, working directly with the architect, tying all those pieces together to create something that would be, you know, fitting and attractive for the community because it they didn't have the correct checkbox on their paperwork to check, then it was classified as graffiti. So it this is what I think a lot of sign painters, a challenge that they struggle with on a regular basis doing business because there has been this disconnect between the inception of vinyl, digital, computerized, cookie cutter stuff, and people working as artists and artisans who are trying to create unique custom one off items that create something really special in in a in a community. And that's that's why it surprises me, I think, that I have seen this mindset within the craft of you can't do it that way, because of all the people that that should not be boxed in, should not be creating self imposed rules, you would think that it would be, someone like a sign painter who's working as an artist, who is creating stuff, who's, you know, thinking outside the normal boundaries of, you know, Helvetica lettering, you know, and a cut plastic panel.

Somebody that's thinking more spatially than that, but, but it's there. It's part of our craft, you know, we I run into it all the time. You know, I'd I'll talk to somebody and, you know, somebody who's, let's say, worked in a certain area of sign painting for many years and really gotten good at something. You know, one one thing that, I think surprises a lot of the newer folks that are getting into sign painting is the it's not just camaraderie. It's not just, you know, cheering each other on.

Sign painters, at least for the couple of decades I've done it, sign painters, have typically been extremely helpful to one another. You know, and it's a part of of our regular routine. I'll my phone a ring or or I'll call another sign painter that I've built up a little rapport with, and I'll be like, hey, I just saw this thing you posted on Instagram or on Facebook. And how in the world did you do that? You know, that's really cool.

I've never seen it done that way. And, you know, they'll walk you through it or you'll walk them through it, and it's just kind of this consistent trade off. And that's that's a great aspect of being in this craft is is it isn't just camaraderie, it's a mutual support that goes on. So I don't know. I if you've got that ability to connect with others and there's the mutual desire to connect, then those conversations are gonna lead you in good places if you're open to them.

But occasionally, you will call somebody or email them or talk to them at a meet or something, and you get this rigidness, this pushing back of, well, I saw that job that you posted, and I saw that little video clip of how you applied this Goldly for that whatever. And I'm speaking very much from firsthand experience, and you're just told, you know, that's not the right way to do it. Well, what's the right way to do it? There there when the guy that first developed, you know, let's say not developed, but when the guy first transferred the information to start water gilding with gelatin size on glass with gold leaf, where did he get that from? And did did he face an uphill battle with the other sign painters around him because he was incorporating this, you know, classic art technique to creating a piece of commercial art?

My suspicion is yes. I think there's probably always been that mentality of people who they just are terrified that you're doing something different, that you're doing something new, that it's out of their comfort zone, and they don't like it. So their only possible reaction is to push back and say, no, you can't you can't do it that way. It's not right. It's not correct.

This is the correct way. This is the correct way. And that dogmatic approach to me just I think that drives me crazy in in my holistically across the board in my whole life. In social settings and, you know, you get to know people and when they're when that dogmatic view that it has to be x y z comes up, those are the people that I drift away from and I don't really wanna spend my time with and hang out and have a beer with. It's just it isn't any fun.

I mean, we have enough complications in life as it is. We don't need to create this set of pharisaical rule setting where this is how it is. You know, that's that's no fun. So there it is. There's my diatribe for the day.

This is, this is kind of a neat thing to do. I I'm enjoying it, and we have a lot of really cool interviews lined up with, at this point, sign painters all over the world. And, we're looking forward to, you know, getting those interviews put together and getting people connected and getting people talking. And, we thank you for tuning in, and, we will see you next week. Today's episode of Coffee with a SoundPainter is brought to you by Full City Rooster Coffee Roasters in Dallas, Texas, roasting distinctive coffees from around the world.

Sean drinks Full City Rooster coffee every day in the studio. You can order their coffee online at fullcityrooster.com. Thanks for listening to Coffee with a Signpainter, hosted by Sean Starr. You can find all sorts of info about the show and sign painting, including previous episodes at our website, seanstar.com.