Interview: Meredith Kasabian of The Pre-Vinylite Society, Boston

Meredith fills us in on what the Pre-Vinylite Society is, how it came about and how you and other lovers of painted signs can get involved. More info: https://www.facebook.com/groups/previnylitesociety

Transcription:

Coming to you from Starr 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. Okay. Welcome back to Coffee with a Signpainter. Today's guest is Meredith Kasabian. She is, the other half of best dressed signs in Boston with Josh Luke.

And, she's also with Josh. She was one of the founders of a group called the Pre Vinylite Society, which is a, well, I'll let her explain, but, it's, it's an interesting twist on an old artistic movement. And, so we're gonna go ahead and talk to Meredith and, see what Pre Vinylite Society is all about and how you, if, you're interested in it, can find it and participate. So let's go ahead and give our attention to Meredith Kasabian in Boston of the Pre Vinylite Society. Okay.

Getting back to our our conversation about the Pre Vinylite Society. Yeah. Why don't you tell us about what it is and how it came about and we'll go from there. Okay. So the Previno Light Society is, it's just a sort of a loose network of sign painters, sign enthusiasts, people that are interested in signs, but also people that are interested in, just sort of their aesthetic environment.

Like, it's kind of just a call for people to kind of be more aware of what their neighborhoods look like, take more pride in their neighborhoods by, like, appreciating quality signage. But personally, I think it can stretch even beyond signs that, you know, into architecture and just the the the things, the sort of built environment that you see every day just sort of like I feel like, maybe in the last however long people have sort of kind of zoned out on what their kind of daily commute looks like and they don't, you know. So it's just kind of a call for people to like pay attention. Wake up a little? Yeah.

And look up. Actually, we were thinking of, we keep coming up with these ideas for like t shirts or whatever that we never do, but one of them was, was either look up, it was like the pre violent society, and then on the back or something I would say like look up. But yeah, so that's pretty much what it is. It's, you know, it's a loose kind of idea, but it started from so when Josh and I moved here, to Boston from San Francisco in 2010, we were, we were in grad school and, I was in grad school for English and Josh was in grad school for art. But a lot of the the work that I do in with writing and research and stuff has always been, kind of centered on art and, like, material objects and stuff.

And so I got really into the, the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood, which was a century group of artists that, they were classically trained in the Royal Academy in England, but they sort of rebelled against that idea of, like, you know, that you have to paint a certain way because at the time they were teaching that composite, you know, like, painting compositions had to be, like, a certain way. They were teaching people to to paint, like, in a very mechanistic, kind of, like, set way and the Pre Raphaelites decided that, you know, they didn't want to do it that way and they started kind of, like, playing with perspective and all that kind of stuff and they called themselves the Pre Raphaelites because they they saw this tradition of this very kind of like rote way of making art as starting from a tradition that started with Raphael. They called themselves the Pre Raphaelites. They were just like 19, 20 year old kids and they would start putting PRB, the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood. They would sign their paintings with that.

Josh and I had a lot of conversations about them and about sign painting and stuff, and so we just, we just thought, you know, how can we kind of take this rebellious sort of attitude and kind of apply it to what we're doing with sign painting and, and that kind of thing. So we were just kind of sitting around talking about it and Josh was like, how can I, you know, what if I start a Facebook page where, like, people can connect? Because we had just started meeting people online, you know, other sign painters and other people that were interested in signs. And so Josh came up with the name Pre Vinylite Society and and it sort of has just grown out of that, you know, sitting around the kitchen talking about it and setting up a Facebook page. So what what kind of, what kind of activity have you guys gotten, like, through the Facebook page?

Is there a decent amount of people participating? Yeah. Well, so the whole Facebook thing is, you know, they keep changing things. I think they're just, you know, to, like, keep their employees doing something. They do work.

Yeah. But, yeah, we we got a lot of, followers. We were surprised by how many followers there were. But the but the Facebook thing is sort of like, so we have it set up as a page, which means that there's like, an administrator called the Pre Vinylite Society who then, like, says things. And I we sort of, you know, it's not an authoritative entity.

We didn't want the Pre Vinylite Society to, like, have control over you know, we wanted it to be like everybody kind of talking. So we just recently started a Pre Vinylite Society group page, which is more like that. Like there's no one person called the Pre Vinylite Society. There's like no president of the anarchists. Right.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so the Facebook page is kind of like I'm the administrator, but I really, you know, I just kind of repost what people post on there.

But it was getting a little it gets a little tedious to repost what everybody's posting on there because it also, like, doesn't show up unless it's posted by the Pre Vinylite Society. So so if anybody's interested in getting on Facebook and and joining the Pre Vinylite Society, the the best bet now is to do the Pre Vinylite Society group. Okay. Because then it's a lot more like, interactive and and there's no, yeah, there's no, like, authority. So you guys have, from from what I've seen, you guys have curated and put together multiple gallery shows of sign painting art.

Yeah. Tell us about that. Okay. So the show the Pre Vinylite Society show was curated by Josh and that was in, 2011 here in Boston. That one didn't really have like a theme, it was just signs, and there were, all different kinds of signs, like there was, I don't know if there were any paper signs in that one, but there was a lot of glass, which was kind of crazy because it came from other parts of the country, you know, like in crepes and stuff, and then we were sort of responsible for it, but everything, thankfully made it there and back.

But yeah that one was kind of you know just just just sign painting and I think it was, well New Bohemia had done a couple of sign painting shows in San Francisco but, outside of that I don't think there had been very many other ones, up until that point. Yeah. I think, that show you're talking about Mhmm. You were were you in it? No.

I think that was just prior to the, Guerrero Gallery show in San Francisco. Yeah. Yeah. Already committed to that. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. So that one was the one, and then, Colt Bowden, did the ICAPS show Mhmm. In California. I think Northern California.

I don't remember where it was, but, but, yeah, he did the Icycap show and then, and then I did one, last March that was about script lettering. Mhmm. And so my kind of, my, what I'm interested in doing with the Brevinalite Society is, like I'm more interested in, like, sort of the cultural context of signs and the historical context of signs than I am in like the making of signs. So with the script show, I had a friend that gave me, that gave me the idea. He has a daughter and she, she's in, you know, elementary school or whatever and the, public schools are no longer required to teach cursive handwriting.

Yeah, I read that. So, so with that show, I just I decided to have it be script, and then I wrote a, sort of like a companion piece to go along with the show that was kind of about how it was about sort of a very, very, very brief, history of handwriting and the different kinds of handwriting, the different kinds of schools of handwriting, and then, you know, kind of talking about the current state of it and what happens when, you know, it basically becomes this thing where it's like only the elite will know how to not only write handwriting but but read it, you know, and be able to access that kind of like your grandparents' letters and, you know, that kind of thing. And so because it's, you know, public schools aren't required to teach it and so if, you know, the public schools are already if they're already struggling with funding, they're not going to teach something they don't have to teach. So it isn't honestly very practical anyway these days. So it's gonna only be schools that have more money that can sort of have something that isn't like What what do you feel about that?

I I mean, I feel like it's gonna become something that's that's elitist. And, I mean, I I it's hard to say. What do you feel about, the school stopping teaching cursive writing and script? It's hard to say because, you know, on the one hand, like, yes, it's something that we're that we're gonna lose as a as a in the general public is gonna is gonna lose this thing. But on the other hand, I completely understand it.

If you're a school that, is struggling for funding and it's it really isn't a practical thing. I mean, it's not practical this day and age. It's really only something that we can kind of hold on to the past. So I do I lament That brings up a good question of, and that's why I'm trying to get at how you feel about it more than anything. It's just as things progress, if you can consider it that more technologically and we lose these kind of things, practical or not, like, how do you feel about that?

Is that a good thing to you? Is that a bad thing? I mean, that brings up the whole thing about artificial intelligence and the singularity and all that as well. I mean, what what do you think? As somebody who's co founded an organization, you know, of trying to preserve old things in a sense, like, how do you feel about that?

Yeah. I definitely lament the loss of it. I mean, that's it's hard. It's like how I feel about it personally, is a little is is, I guess, different. Not necessarily different, but, doesn't necessarily coincide with how I feel about it sort of, socially or whatever.

But personally, yeah, I think it's horrible. I think it's it's, you know, it's it's the key to the past that we will only be I think that's the thing. I don't think it's gonna be lost completely. I think that there will still be people that do it, but I think those people are gonna be elitist. They're gonna be the, you know you're gonna have to get your grandparents' letters.

You're You're gonna have to go to somebody and have them translated or or transcribed. Mhmm. You know? So that's it's it's sad, but it's, you know, I don't know. I mean, I'm definitely I definitely lament the loss of it, but it's, I think it's inevitable.

So it's sort of I don't know. Yeah. I'm on the I'm on the same, you know, plane as you. I mean, we're we're right now using, you know, technology to be able to do this. In this conversation and share it with people all over the world.

But at the same time, I hate it. And I hate that we are, every day, the more technology that's, you know, becoming available, the more disconnected we all are from each other. You know, the whole selling point, you know, originally was supposedly, I think that, you know, oh, this is gonna connect everyone and it's really disconnecting everyone. Yeah. It does well, it does both.

It works in both ways. It's like, one of the things that, one of, like, the pieces of sign history that I am, like, find really fascinating is, so mostly the era that I sort of study the most is like the century. And that's kind of the point where so many things started changing to the way that we know them now. So one of the things is that in the century, most signs were pictorial because most people were illiterate. Okay.

And so, there was a a point where, there was sort of an overhaul and I'm talking about, mostly England and America. Like, I don't, you know, I don't know about other other places really because that's just what I study. But, so there was a point where, the signs started changing to to words and that also happened at the time where, they started implementing the numbering and naming system for streets because before the before the streets were numbered, they people were actually, like, using the signs to give each other directions. So they were saying, you know, I live two doors down from the sign of the cock or whatever, which is like, you know, a rooster, which would be like the name of a tavern or whatever. Glad you clarified.

Or I don't know. I guess I didn't have to choose that. I could have said something else, but, the sign of the the sign of the crown could Freud would be proud. Yeah. But, but yeah.

So that's how people would actually give directions was based on, you know, these Whatever image was on it? What's that? So they would base it on whatever image was on the sign? Right. Right.

So, so when, like, the numbering system came into it came, you know, started happening, it almost made it where it was like, like, one main street is one main street. Like, whether it's like a church or a tavern or like a brothel or like a you know, no matter what it is, 1 Main Street is one main street. So it kind of made it so it was like made the space more exchangeable in a way. Like, it wasn't, do you know what I mean? Like, it made it so that you could kind of change out the the the place, and it didn't really matter because that was still one main street.

So it's sort of, like, in a similar way, it's like with the technology with, like, GPS now, we don't even need to look at street now. We're just looking down at our phones and just taking a left when the machine tells us to take a left. Like, we're not And if there's ever a blackout, we're a mess. Yeah. I actually have this idea for, a short story, and and now someone's gonna take it.

And that's alright because I'm never gonna do it. But, it's called GPS to Hell. So it's like these people that are in, like, they're in a traffic jam. Uh-huh. And they're like, because they're just following their GPS, but, like, the GPS is just sending if there's a traffic jam It, like, comes alive or comes here.

Well, maybe Stephen King will listen and pick that up. Yeah. Yeah. Here's open. Well, so what do you guys, okay.

Clarify this for me. Like, who who is the Pre Vinylite Society at this point? Is it is it you and Josh? And I know Colt, Bowden is involved. Yeah.

Yeah. It's everybody that wants to cut it's everybody that wants to jump in? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

If you if you wanna be a pre vinylite, you're a pre vinylite. It's not, yeah. I mean, there's no president of the anarchist. So if somebody's in Montana and wants to put together a show, you can proceed with that. Is that correct?

Yeah. I mean, I think, I think it can get a little bit tricky in the sense. I mean, yes, absolutely. If somebody wants to put on a pre Vinyl Society show, that's that would be wonderful. I can see the potential of it maybe getting, beyond what maybe we've, like, envisioned it to be or intended it to be or whatever.

Like like, there's sometimes a misconception, I think, that people think that pre vinyl equals anti vinyl, and there's sort of been these sort of anti vinyl kind of sentiments going around. And it's not, I mean, I guess when we started, you know, came up with the name, we were, I guess, kind of naive about, like what, like, vinyl, the sort of different kinds of vinyl or the potential of vinyl. We were we were really just thinking about, like, you know, the quickie signs vinyl banner flapping in the wind and peeling. You know, we weren't thinking about, like, well designed vinyl signs or whatever. Yeah.

And and I think, I've had this conversation, with a lot of people that have been, you know, in the trade a long time. I don't think anyone would disagree that there's definitely, there's a place for vinyl that is very practical and it's very superior to paint in certain areas, you know, like if you've got a fleet of 20 vans that you turn in for lease every five years, you know, putting vinyl on them is far more practical than painting on them and having to get trucks repainted before you turn them in and all that. And, you know, so, even though I'm I've always been very vocal in complaining about vinyl, it's more about the that transition that we've all talked about where, basically, all of that technology was embraced in such a way that people were attempting to do custom signage with vinyl Right. And with no background in designing and no background in color coordination or anything else and just spitting out horrible looking things. Right.

That wasn't their place, you know, that wasn't the fit. You know, if you open up some, you know, little indie coffee shop in a corner building in a in a town square type thing, then, yeah, you know, putting stickers all over is just not the right fit. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think, like, when we when we sort of came up with the idea and came up with the name, we had just moved to Boston from San Francisco, and Josh had worked, at New Bohemia Science in San Francisco for, like, five years before we moved to Boston. And when we moved to Boston, we we lived in this, kind of really transient, like, college student, grad student neighborhood where like there's no investment in the signage or much else. And, you know, because it's like every year, every two years, you're gonna get a new crop of people coming in. So it's like, didn't it felt like the the shops in the the neighborhood didn't really feel like they needed to invest in anything. And it kind of it had this really ephemeral, like, it didn't feel like home, you know, just felt like we were just sort of passing through and that everybody else was sort of passing through and I think the vinyl signs, they're just kind of whatever crappy, you know, banners.

And on some nice places too. Like, there was a really nice bar down the street from us that had, like, like, they seemed to really care about their, like, their aesthetic on the inside. They had, like, exposed brick, and they had these nice pool tables, and, like, you know, it was a nice looking place, and they just had, like, a grommeted vinyl black lettering on a white background kind of sign of me. We talked to them about it, obviously, because we were, you know, back then, we were sort of hustling and giving our business card out everywhere we went and they they just didn't it just was like, they didn't Yeah. Understand or they were like, we have a sign.

What do you mean? You know? So Yeah. I it's, you you can't convince somebody that doesn't already get the value of a well designed executed sign. You can't convince them because, they would already have one.

Yeah. That's the conclusion I've come to is I think the the very worst, effort that someone who's out hustling and trying to get established and trying to get work, the worst effort you can make is to go into a place that has a bad sign. Because they already made that bad decision once. Right. And they didn't think it was bad because they spent the money and it's still there.

And, you know, so that that, that took many years for me to figure out. Mhmm. Yeah. Definitely. I remember, when we got the studio open in San Francisco, I walked from the Outer Mission all the way down Mission Street, to downtown and handed out flyers over like a three day period.

Got zero jobs from any of it. Because, you know, that's just, that's a part of the city that's just, you know, it is what it is. It's just hodgepodge of people that have just thrown things in there and they're trying to make money. And, so, yeah, it was odd because, right after I I made that effort, I got a call, from a place in the Haight that wanted me to lettered their windows. And I hadn't not even begun to go in that direction of the city yet.

So Right. Yeah. Funny how that worked. Yeah. Well, we when we moved here, we, contacted the tattoo shops.

Mhmm. And that was that was what, you know, a tattoo shop was the sign that we did here. Because I think that they're more obviously more likely to, you know, be interested in something hand done. And, so the the sign that we did in Boston was a tattoo shop that, that did have a really bad sign. And they knew they were like, you know, they just were like, woah.

We just got an email from somebody saying that they wanna paint us a sign. And they had, like, a it was like, it was like phone core with, like it looked like a kinder care sign. And then they said I mean, I am saying this too, but they said it to me as well. You know, it was I think they I think they, they they did a bonfire with it after when they put up the new one. But yeah.

Yeah. I I think I think the tattoo shops are a good natural fit for someone wanting to just, you know, get themselves out there and get some work under their belt. You know, there's a lot of work to do. It's not just the name of the tattoo shop. There's little signs inside, the little rules.

And, you know, I know Derek McDonald, at Golden West Signs in Berkeley. You know, we had talked about that a few years back when they were filming the sign painter movie. Because, you know, back then, I don't know if he's still doing this, but, when work would get slow, he'd paint a bunch of tattoo related signs and put them in his van and he'd drive all the way from San Francisco, LA. By the time he got to LA, he had sold them all and was able to pay his bills and go back home. Yeah.

Tattoo shops are definitely a good place at least to start or like, yeah, if you're having a slower time, they tend to go buy, you know, cash only or tips appreciated or anything like that. Yeah. So do you have any, upcoming things with the Previno White Society? Do you have shows that you're working on or lining up or anything like that? What's What's going on?

I do have a show that I'm working on. So, like I said, the century is my kind of, that's my era that I like the best. And, so there was actually the very sun painting exhibition was in London in 1762. Very soon. Yeah.

Wow. I didn't know that. Yeah. So, I know. It's I was like when I found this out, I was like running around the house, like, trying to get everybody to look at the book.

So, yeah. So, because the signs were kind of, they were kind of crazy, like it was kind of a chaotic scene in century London, partially because, so before maybe like the mid century, 1750s or so, most signs were just for taverns or inns because the idea of a shop hadn't really come into being yet. Like people still kind of went to like the weekly market to buy their goods. Okay. But in the in the century with like the industrial revolution and also, specifically in England, they were, you know, colonizing the world.

So they were there was this influx of a bunch of products either from colonized lands or from the industrial revolution. They were, manufacturing things. So all these shops started popping up in specialty type shops. And so more shops, more signs, and the signs were getting like bigger and bigger and bigger and they were, you know, like competing with each other. They were like obstructing the the street, like you couldn't even see down the road because the signs were like so big and there was no, there were no laws or codes about signs at the time.

So in, in 1762 in London there was a city ordinance that required that all of the projecting signs be taken down because they were falling down. They killed they actually killed people a couple times. Wow. So they had to be taken down and replaced with signs that were, that would be like affixed to the fronts of buildings. So this group of satirist journalists and playwrights and, you know, those the kind of people that, you know, took the piss and, you know, wrote wrote, like, satirical articles and newspapers and stuff.

They had this idea, they were called the nonsense club. They had this idea that they were gonna go out and actually remove the signs from the streets themselves and hang them up in a gallery and they charged people to come to what they called the Grand Exhibition of the Society of Sign Painters. And that was the very sign painting. With stolen signs, they charged people to come look at me. That's awesome.

Yeah. And so, and it was a sarcastic kind of They weren't At the time, you know, we have this sort of anachronistic tendency to wanna be like, Oh, that's so You know, they were, kind of questioning, you know, what is art or can science be art or whatever, but that's not really what they were doing. They were just kind of having fun and trying They were just being punks. Yeah. Yeah.

So okay. So my idea hold on. I'm gonna take a sip of water. K. So my idea is, oh, okay.

So also there's a, there's a catalog that they printed to go along with the show. So none of the signs exist anymore, like, none of them survived, but they have a a catalog, which is like a written list that describes the signs that were in the show. Great. And some of them are sort of literal, and then some of them are kind of cryptic and weird and kind of making fun of the sign. So my favorite one is, a dying swan supposed oh, no.

I'm sorry. I got that wrong. A flying swan supposed by some to be a dying one. So it's kind of making fun of like, it was such a bad painting. They can't tell if it's you know, that kind of thing.

So okay. So my idea is to have, have the artists choose a, a description from the catalog and they can either letter the description word for word or they can pictorially interpret. Okay. So it'll be a show of both, pictures and letters. That's awesome.

Yeah. And I'm trying to make it happen actually in London. I've been talking to, well, Sam Roberts has been has been a wonderful, resource. He's the ghost signs guy. Right?

He's the ghost signs guy. He he's been he's been wonderful. He's, he's also editing, a book that I'm gonna be writing a chapter for on ghost signs. My chapter is on faux ghost signs, which actually I want to ask your opinion on that. But anyway, so he put me in touch with, Liat Chen who was the co curator for the business as usual show that just happened in London that, Jed Palmer Okay.

Yeah. I saw the picture from that. So, so I'm talking with her about trying to get it to happen in London because I just think that it, it makes more sense to happen in London. It's a piece of British history that, nobody knows about and, I just think it would be better received there and and also, you know, I wanna involve a lot of the British sign writers. That's super cool.

Yeah. Yeah. So actually I want to ask you, so okay, so I'm writing a chapter for, it's gonna it's an academic book on ghost signs that is being edited by, Sam Roberts and then, Stefan Schutte or Schutte, I don't know how to pronounce his name, and Lianne White from the Victoria University in Australia. Okay. And my chapter is on Faux Ghost Signs, and kind of, how what that what the role of the sign painter is these days in producing these Faux Ghost signs.

So I'm actually going to be sending out a survey, in the next, like, week or so, asking sort of a series of questions of what sign painters think about painting Faux ghost signs. So I'm curious. I'm sure that you have an opinion on it. So do you get requests for full go signs and how do you feel about doing that? Yeah.

And, you know, most of the wall signs that we do, they they want them, you know, aged and distressed and to look old. So we do a lot of that. But, yeah, email me the questions. I would attempt to answer them now, but I'm not quite awake enough to think of my Okay. I was trying to turn the tables on you.

No, I will. I'm actually I'm gonna be sending it out probably. There's, there's a distressed sign workshop group on Facebook and, I'll put it out on the Prevailide Society group too. But it'll be like a survey monkey. Yeah.

I've been, working with, a professor at the University of Texas in San Antonio who's kind of doing a similar thing. She's putting together a book and some other stuff related to Mexican sign painters in San Antonio. And that's where I got my start. I've provided some input that makes sense to me. But, yeah, I think it's really cool that even just academically that there's people, you know, trying to document and explore the history of it.

It's Yeah. You know, because a lot of that, I think without that, would just kind of drift off into nothing. Yeah. Definitely. I think I think it's important that it's that signs are being discussed in, you know, larger kind of like forums than than just between sign painters, you know.

I think it's important to get it out to people that may not really ever think about signs, you know. Yeah. And, you know, like even with this podcast, you know, the the numbers that we're getting, I'm I'm pretty certain at this point there's not that many sign painters alive and working left. Yeah. You know, so there's obviously a lot of interest from, you know, graphic designers.

I know there's a core group there that follows sign painting. But I think it's just spreading wider and wider, which is pretty exciting. Yeah. Totally. Okay.

Now, last episode, I interviewed, James Roy Thomas in LA, sign painter. And I failed to do something and I received a lot of crap for it, which is I did not No. I did not ask him about his, music choices or his guilty pleasures of music. So I will dump that on you of what what have you been listening to in the last week to two weeks and you have to admit it if it's embarrassing. Okay.

Well, this isn't it's not embarrassing for We all wanna hear the embarrassing. Alright. Well, it's I'm not embarrassed by I'm not embarrassed by any of my I love the music I love is the music I love, and I don't care. The only thing that's, like, maybe kind of embarrassing is that, I listen to the Pogues on Saint Patrick's Day. Like, I would listen to the Pogues, like, I've been listening to the Pogues for twenty years.

I mean, like, I would any excuse, but, you know, I I did feel, like, a little bit of cliche. Yeah. I was cleaning Boston. Listening to the Pogues. Yeah.

Yeah. Austin. I was cleaning the house and, like, you know, kind of dancing around and, I I I was a little bit self conscious of what the neighbors are like. Oh, she's listening to Irish music on Saint Patrick's Day. But, but, yeah, I've been listening to, so, there's a band called Dive.

I think it's Dive. Josh keeps saying Div, but it's d I I v, that's really good. That's like a new because I I kinda get stuck in my era. Like, I get stuck in my eras. So, like, most of what I listen to is, like or sort of, like, my foundation for music is, like Yeah.

You think? Yeah. Like like, kind of post punk punk seventies, you know, that kind of thing. So I I get excited when I find a band that's new that I really like, you know? So, yeah, dive.

Oh, yeah. I've been listening to the English beat a lot. So we're kind of having a, which apparently I found out is just called the beat in England. Yeah. I think they had to add English when they started selling records in The US because there was somebody already doing that here.

Yeah. Yeah. But we've been kinda having, like, a couple of warm days. You know? Like, it's been was a horrific, brutal winter.

So the couple of nice days that we've had, I've been, like, you know, I wanna listen to, like, you know Oh, that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm not really embarrassed by any of my I mean, maybe other people are embarrassed for me, but that's alright. Yeah. That's the fun stuff is when you can embarrass your friends. That's true. Okay.

Well, thanks for clarifying things about the Pre Vinylites Society and the motivation to do it. And, so the main way to interact with that is the Facebook group, right? Yeah. Yeah. I would definitely the Facebook group is, the best way to kind of get your voice heard, I think.

So by joining the group, people can post pictures of their work or questions, that kind of thing? And how many people do you have on that group now? Not that many yet. I think I think it's like 150, maybe 200 now. Okay.

That's still a pretty sizable group. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm getting requests, like, every day, so people are interested in joining it. So Okay.

Well And it's also it's like, you know, it doesn't have to be about signs. You don't have to post about signs. You know? I mean, ideally, you're not posting about something, like, you know, completely unrelated, but, you know, it doesn't have to be, there's a there's a group, called the Society for Commercial Architecture. Oh, no.

No. I'm sorry. The Society for Commercial Archaeology that is like they try to, document and and they have, like, preservation efforts for, like roadside attraction type things or, like, old diners, like signs are part of it, but I kinda like that. I kinda like that it's, like, a little so I often will, like, repost their stuff on my Okay. Cool.

MyAlly page, so Alright. Well, thanks for chatting. Yeah. Thank you. I really appreciate you, you know, being able to kind of talk about my role on things.

Yeah. Okay. Cool. Okay. Thanks again, Meredith, for taking the time to talk with us and explain some of that, is related to the Pre Vinylite Society.

And, we wish you much success in the future art shows and other things you have coming up. I'd like to thank our listeners for tuning in yet again and for checking out, the show. I've got some pretty fun things coming up. One of them is Full City Rooster Coffee in Dallas has decided to, make a sign painter's blend. As you probably know, Full City has generously sponsored our show from the beginning and gave us a lot of moral support.

And, in addition to that, I've been buying my coffee from them for a couple of years now. And it's, you know, genuinely my favorite coffee, best coffee I think I've I've found. So, anyways, if you are interested, coming up, I believe later this week, you'll be able to start ordering the sign painters blend from their website at fullcityrooster.com. So, check that out. I don't think you'd be disappointed and, they're good people.

We've, we've done some work for them and, really dig what they're all about and family, run company and very much into their community and good stuff. So there's my plug for them and they deserve it because they're they're doing good stuff. So, till next week, enjoy yourselves and get to some painting. 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, seanstarr.com.