SIGNMAKERS
1999
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
PROCESS
RESEARCH
Signmakers was developed initially for the Europos Parkas / Europos Centro Muziejus (Museum of the Centre of Europe) artist residency in Vilnius, Lithuania. Five completed signs were permanently installed along the road and forest path during the summer Sculpture Symposium and Residency in 1999.
Incorporating elements such as hobo symbols, transportation signs, and language barriers, the Signmakers project invites the host site and community to participate in a visual dialogue.
Signmakers is a flexible project welcoming all communities interested in speaking through the language of art.
The participants featured on these signs volunteered during their visit to the museum. During a twenty minute interview, they completed a questionnaire and posed for a digital headshot.
The questionnaire asked the participant to choose a shape of sign (from a limited selection I had brought from the U.S.) and colors (from a limited selection of colors available in reflective vinyl). In addition, they chose a hobo symbol (symbols and definitions enclosed) which they redefined without having knowledge of the original meaning. The title for the piece in which they participated incorporated the first name and symbol ‘slogan’ of the participant. For example, Loretta: Sutinku jus atvira sirdimi (Loretta: Meeting you with open heart), pictured below.
Other questionnaires reveal
translation (Pirkkala),
visitors' language (Tobias:
Latvia),
understanding intent (Andrius:
Lithuania), and lengthy slogans (Tiina:
Nykarleby)
Following the interview, I created a digital file which was later enlarged, printed, and applied to the sign by a local sign manufacturing company.
Left to right: Loretta Lileikiene,
her monochromatic portrait, hobo symbol, and composite image.
Road Signs
My interest in transportation signs began the day I noticed a hand-made sign in my neighborhood (in Albany, New York). The sign warned drug dealers to "beware", or be aware that they were being watched (implying that the police were not watching but citizens were).
I wondered what signs would look like if citizens’ input was incorporated into their design and text. Road signs are carefully regulated in color, font, and shape. But who decides the content and visual appeal of these images that dot our national landscape? What if community members and artists designed them?
Hobo symbols
Hoboes were itinerant travelers during the 1930’s Depression era. The public varied in its reaction to these jobless wanderers. Some gave free food, free lodging, or kind words. Others threatened to report them to the police. As a result, hoboes developed a symbolic language to warn or encourage each other through a network of signs which they drew with chalk on sidewalks, benches, and walls. Some were foreboding with phrases like "A man with a gun lives here," while others were encouraging, "You will be welcome here."
Hobo symbol meaning, "A man with
a gun lives here."
The symbols are simple, comprised of different combinations of linear marks from triangles to arrows. Fascinated by their simplicity, I wanted to test their endurance. Comparing this forgotten, yet once vital, symbolic language to verbal communication, I wondered to what extent the meaning had survived perhaps in our collective memory.