I once used my “can-do” attitude to convince a young man that I could repaint a tall weather vane and windmill that had to be lettered about 50 feet up in the air. It was big-time scary just to climb to the top ladder rung while I scraped, primed and repainted the blades red and white. I had to pull each blade down one by one to reach them. I was never quite sure how the fan was locked, but the creaking sound was pretty nerve-racking because it occurred to me now and then that a good puff of wind could have done me in at any moment. 

 

My itinerate sign vehicle known as “Galactica” (circa 1985) when I traveled the country painting signs and launching what would be a lifetime career of artistic exploration.

After a couple days, the blades were almost done but I couldn’t figure out what I was going to do about the tail part that needed to be lettered and stuck out into space about five feet. 

On the third day, when I was close to finishing all but the impossible part, I looked down at several small people way below and saw one older man motioning wildly for me to cease and desist and come down immediately. The “father” I assume, was pretty shaken up by what was going on, and angrily paid me to stop right away. I was relieved to have a good excuse to return from one of my more foolish brinks.

 

After all these years, I find that I still live a similar adventurous creative edge as I am easily bored by rote sign making. Although I’ve tried to change, I seem to keep working with over-the-top artistic challenges. I have a habit of taking a little bit of technique and then running with my own interpretation, before completely mastering the original. 

 

“My way” has yielded some fantastic results, yet there are also drawbacks. I have ridden out many learning curves building original sign art and survived some personal growth along the way. I have stuck by my “can-do” spirit without losing my nerve, because good things do happen over time. 

 

Without the camaraderie of Letterheads, I might have kept thinking outside the box, but my sign work wouldn’t have improved. From left to right: yours truly Mos’dif, Ray Guzman, Bill Diaz, Jane Diaz and Gary Anderson.

“Thinking differently” takes a lot of practice, belief in myself and some serious guts. On the other hand, I need that guy who notices I’m on the edge of the weather vane to keep me safely grounded. I am thankful to those Letterheads (and other artistic co-conspirators) who have shown me that sharing innovation and fun can be a sane lifestyle. Heck, I’m normal compared to many of them. Wise veteran sign makers have helped me to balance my quirky originality with real sign facts that one shouldn’t proceed without knowing. Doing my own thing brings its own share of fulfillment, but working with others really helps minimize the dangers of my “out-on-a-limb” style.

 

On the other hand, I received merciless abuse at a meet for daring to use classic sign materials to make a gift piece. It’s not an old fashioned sign and I probably made some mistakes, but I enjoyed pirating some techniques for a related art project. Black enamel-outlines, four types of gold and some variegated leaf, and translucent ink backed up with silver paint.

Within the last few years, with the help of many resources, I’ve come to realize that some of my challenges are explained by attention-deficit disorder. I used to think that my particular set of symptoms were typical of everyone else who survived the crazy world of being self-taught and self-employed. I thought that all I had to do was become more “professional.” I have spent much of my career reacting to everything with a can-do attitude that is often way ahead of any accurate assessment of reality. Now that I am over 50, with a family and home to support, I can no longer tolerate the unpredictable roller-coaster of stress that comes from risky highs and avoidable lows. Often I feel that my positive creative sales accomplishments have been overshadowed by re-occurring mistakes and chronic stress that feel like an addiction to doing things “the hard way.” It has taken me a lifetime to build up enough self-understanding to allow me to ask myself whether I am on a difficult path that profitably explores creativity, or if I am being an idiot working too hard and inappropriately, just to compensate for my own short-comings.

 

The original project goal was to replace the ugly 4’ x 8’ lightbox on the storefront with “something.” I enjoy brainstorming with willing clients. In this case, the owner was my grounding aid so I was able to target tailor my artistic ideas to their specific need—a bold sign that read well from a local superhighway. I designed a building wrap using HDU and hand-painted and Gemini letters. I carved the thumbprint from 3/4” HDU and added a super white mica pearl finish.

A recent revelation for me involved a study that showed that sleep-deprived people tend to think optimistically, and therefore take more chances. I realized that this is a good description of what has often happened to me. When I was finishing a long job, I didn’t want to look at the work too closely. I’d lose interest in the final details and also lose the ability to objectively appraise a color match or a level line. After a certain point, I’d be ready to assume the work was good enough without being able to take in additional critiques. If someone called me on it, I was ready to spin an excuse tale, “It’s not me… it’s… blah, blah, blah.”

 

The Pho Bar wanted a sign with its logo that would look like an old pan-formed sign for its archway. After thinking of six possible ways to do it, I settled on making an HDU sculpture with an aggressive faux-finish. I thought I was going to hand-cut the bull and nest it into a free-hand rout so the bull would sink into the background. Of course, it didn’t nest very well. Now what? I poured Gorilla glue into the gaps around the bull feeling desperate and crazy, but then I scraped off the excess and finished the image with Sophisticated Finishes rust paint. The result is very convincing as old metal. The background is crackle varnish. Coat No. 1 red, coat No. 2 crackle glue varnish, coat No. 3 black latex.

Another huge issue was the stress and exhaustion caused by poor planning and organization, which would then get made up by working longer hours. If I needed to be somewhere on schedule, I wasn’t able to stop doing “one more thing” until it was too late, and then I’d rush and stress even more. My shop was chronically messy, which led to indifference about clutter and routinely wasted a lot of time. The whole cycle was dangerous and counterproductive, and most importantly, it brought down my self-esteem. Ultimately my craftsmanship was compromised because I was repeatedly shooting myself in the foot on many levels. 

 

Many of these persistent difficulties have eased to some extent as I have become more aware of my challenges and discovered ways to navigate them more successfully. A large dose of self-acceptance has helped put the pluses and minuses in perspective and I am increasingly appreciative of the lens with which I’ve been given to view the world.

 

This recent window sign could be the first-ever gilding and translucent vinyl combination. The band and the “A” are 12K surface white gold. The green is Arlon vinyl film. The Amphora logo seemed like an obvious opportunity to combine both materials in an unexpected way.

Once at a Letterhead meet, I mentioned my new-found awareness of ADD to a friend and he waved his hand over the whole gathering and said, “That’s not a problem. See all these people… they all have ADD!” It made me feel better, but whether true or not, sign work is a good niche for artistic people who enjoy getting paid for their talents. It has often seemed like the only job for me. (That’s because it is the only job I’ve ever had!) 

 

Rather than feeling down about the label, I have found it liberating because there are a lot of new positive ways to look at people who can’t help but think outside of the box. In my next article I’ll discuss survival techniques to navigate the often challenging art of balancing creativity and profit in the sign world. 

The Rockwall winery on the former Alameda Naval base wanted a really big A-frame in a very windy location. We’re not sure whether it was me or the client who thought up the wine barrel idea, but I am proud of how I designed the structure. The construction went very smoothly for such an unusual sign. The key was that I charged enough so that I could take as much time as I needed to consider all the construction details. (I tried to convince the client to float the sign across the bay and offer wine tasting on the water outside of AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants, but they didn’t take me up on the idea.)