microcosm huron thomistic

“A beautiful lady is an accident of nature. A beautiful old lady is a work of art.”Louis Nizer

 Just two of the twenty cement mixer portraits I took the other day

Yes, I've been working hard!

 I've been retired, never to be used again as a hurricane.  This was snapped in USA Today as I was waiting in the car dealership to have a ding undinged.  AND they put on the new mirror covers-  see below.

In case any of you doubted me on my drama last year about my Octopus Agave (it bolted with a seed head that ended up being 20 feet tall), here is confirmation in a cartoon that it does exist!   

And here are the new mirror covers!   They were thrown in to seal the deal, just had to bring the car back for the installation which consisted of snapping them on. Oh well.  Should I add a little distressing paint to make them look like MacKenzie Childs had something to do with them?  Input requested.

Here are the parts I'm working on for the new little bag I'm making-  the silver paint was stenciled on linen using a construction fence as the resist,  Now I'm stitching around the shapes in different colors of embroidery thread.  The lining is at right with the pockets made from a silk scarf left off my MOB dress from last year.  The black and white stuff was so slippery I had to fuse it to some old stuff to make it hold still to be cut out.  I'm glad, it needed the extra body.  I should finish the stitching tonight, so tomorrow I assemble.

I have a pretty big selection of #5 embroidery threads, but the trouble is they are all arranged in suceh pretty order, I hate to take them out of their little sleeves!  Sometimes organization bites you in the ass.

So much for my day.  I ddi do a little collecting off the internets and hope you enjoy a little survey of sign painting-  the luddite version with a brush and a steady hand!  There are still companies who do it the old way, and a beautiful job too.  The styled harken back to old cigar boxes and advertising wall murals on the sides of buildings with their colors fading off.  And another parallel is tattoo artists-  see if you agree...

And now a little typography of the old-school brand!

BlueCat Traditional

BigTop Sign Arts

 Andrew Patrick Henry

Caitlyn Galloway

The Book

You guessed it! Sign Painters, and the lost art that is sign painting {um, with a foreword by Ed Ruscha!}. The book profiles, and celebrates, classic sign painters – the artists who actually use a brush, and paint, and old-school techniques to create some of the most beautiful typographic art in the world. But Faythe and Sam didn’t stop with a book … nope … they just made a documentary too!

Roman Mars podcast episode on Hand Painted signs here:

(aside:  I love this podcast, it's all about architecture that is so obvious it's invisible to us-  he takes us on tours to bring awareness to public and private spaces.  And it's well researched and informative and,
dare I say, FUN!

New Film coming out:
 
SIGN PAINTERS (OFFICIAL TRAILER) from samuel j macon