Photomural of the installation of Steve Powers' Love Letter to Baltimore (2014) juxtaposes an image of Clifford Olson painting a sign for Bill Mortimer (1950s). The purpose is to demonstrate  sign painting then and now using a recent Baltimore-based contemporary art project. The artist's style is heavily influenced by traditional sign painting techniques and graffiti.

Photographs of the signs represented in the photomurals to the left and right. 

The image on the right was taken by Matthew Kubon and the image to the left was on loan from Colleen Olson-Bauman.

In 1932, 11-year-old Clifford Olson hopped a freight train near his hometown of Columbus, Nebraska, and set out to explore the West. Armed with brushes, paint, and determination, he drifted from town to town, hustling local businesses to employ him to paint their signs. He had no formal training, using his artistic talent to learn sign painting on the job. Drafted into the U.S. Coast Guard, he arrived in Baltimore for training in 1942 and never left. During his 55-year career he painted signs for well-known Baltimore businesses and icons including McCormick & Company, A.D. Anderson car dealerships, and Little Italy.

Olson’s whimsical sign “Cloud/Mattresses/Enjoy Relaxed Sleep,” located at Guilford Avenue and Chase Street, can be seen while traveling north on the Jones Falls Expressway. The ad was commissioned by the International Bedding Company in the 1950s and was restored in 2008 by Baltimore-based sign painter Bob Merrell. 

Clifford Olson's original photographs, drawings, and objects were a challenge to display for two reasons. The first was the gallery space. The Baltimore Museum of Industry's temporary gallery is a wide hallway that is the point of entry to many of the other permanent industrial rooms (i.e. the garment loft, pharmacy, transportation gallery, etc.) and a small square room adjacent to the hall. I had to choose my objects carefully because the hallway is a space of transition and the objects were more likely to be bumped or touched.  The disjointed layout was a difficult design and narrative problem to address. I took in account the gallery's multiple entry points when I designed the exhibit, wrote my script, and created a graphic identity. The exhibit's content can be understood by itself and within the exhibit as a whole. The second concern was the age of the objects. Many were designed in the 1950s and 60s, were on paper, and had no mounting accouterments. My mentor, Jane Woltereck who is the Director of Collections and I created our own mounts using mylar, Plexiglass, velcro, and screws without damaging the objects. 

The entrance to the square gallery is adjacent to Clifford Olson's display. 

Albert Liebergott’s interest in art began at an early age. The native Baltimorean spent many hours observing and drawing people wherever he went. His artistic skills enabled him to paint life-like pictorials that added a unique and recognizable quality to his signs. Liebergott’s 52-year sign painting career began in California. He moved back to Baltimore in 1952 and worked for Park Sign Company before establishing Liebergott Signs, Incorporated, in 1955. Liebergott painted billboards, trucks, and walls all over Maryland. His clients included Ryder System transport company, Sweetheart Cups, Luskin’s Electronics, and Fradkin Brothers Furniture. 

Brendon Brandon was traditionally trained, entering a five-year sign painting apprenticeship at age 16. He worked in New Zealand and England before settling in Annapolis. An innovative, versatile, highly skilled craftsman, he has earned respect within the industry as a master gilder and talented brush artist. A member of the Letterheads, he has also served as president of the International Society of Gilders and editor of its magazine, The Gilder’s Tip. He has taught gilding and sign making for the Fashion Institute of Technology, the Smithsonian, and industry trade groups.

Brandon has provided unique, high quality signs to Maryland and Washington, D.C., for decades. Notable projects include: surface gilding at the National Museum for Women in the Arts, glass gilding at the Kennedy Center and The Mount Washington Tavern, and architectural signs at Bond Street Wharf and Parts and Labor.

The display case was a method of transitioning from Albert Leibergott and Clifford Olson, both were wall dogs (a term for sign painters that hand lettered walls), to Brendon Brandon, who is a master gilder. The case was a physical divider that introduced basic tools.

The back wall of the gallery featured Brendon Brandon's artwork and Gary Eddington, the same person that designed my title wall. Gary Eddington’s artistic values drive his work as a sign painter. A MICA graduate, his BFA in Sculpture (1970) helped him gain the skills and knowledge to craft both two-dimensional and three-dimensional signs. Before establishing his own business, Studio 1539, he worked for Maryland-based Pollitt Signs, Apple Signs, Claude Neon, and the City of Baltimore. His experience and education contributed to his mastery of many types of sign painting, including gilding, wall signs, sandblasted signs, reverse-painted window signs, and carved signs. 

Eddington is committed to providing his customers with signs that are easy to read and perfectly fit their sites. Highly critical of traditional sign painting methods, he finds it natural to experiment and seek out more efficient and effective processes. To Eddington, art practice and sign painting are nearly synonymous. He consistently synthesizes traditional sign painting concepts and fine art.

Linda Gillis painted her first sign in 1980 and opened her first sign shop in Annapolis the following year. She had fallen in love with hand-lettering and saw it as a way to apply her creativity and make a living. In 1981, she placed an ad in her local Penny Saver: “BOAT LETTERING— You Name It, We'll Letter it. If her back end is bare or just fading away— call CUSTOM LETTERING.” It caught the attention of local yacht brokers; since then, she has designed and hand-lettered the names of more than 1,000 boats, including the Governor of Maryland’s yacht, Maryland Independence.

In the 1980s and 1990s Gillis hand-lettered about 300 boats in a season, March to October. “Back then, it was almost completely a free-style or free-hand art form on each boat,” she reflects. “Today, it's almost all vinyl lettering, very different.” Though many inquiries are for vinyl lettering, lately she has seen a renewed interest in hand-painted transoms. 

As far as Robert Merrell is concerned, the business of sign painting just gets better and better. “I haven’t been slow since 1990,” he shrugs. Merrell jumpstarted his career as a freelance sign painter while earning his BFA in Graphic Design from MICA in 1988. Within a few years, he launched Merrell Designs, and soon his signs lined nearly every bar in Canton Square and Fells Point. His tireless work ethic, attention to detail, eye-catching layouts, and laid-back attitude built him a solid reputation.

Thirty years later, Merrell’s signs are still present, and he is gaining even more wall work. Some of his patrons include the Baltimore Orioles, Johns Hopkins University, The Maryland Zoo in Baltimore, Canton Dockside, and Main Street Oyster House. 

As a hands-on learner I wanted to incorporate an interactive display component to engage visitors on another level. During my research I was inspired by Mark Dion's cabinets of curiosity and the Museum of Art and Design's display of Baltimore artist Joyce Scott's artwork in the exhibit Maryland to Murano. As a visitor I felt engaged and connected with the objects even though I was not allowed to touch them. The simple act of pulling out the drawers and discovering what was inside satisfied my need to touch. 

Ole Olson, Clifford Olson's son and a fine furniture maker, helped me make these custom display cases for the show. It was a final touch that gave me the space I needed to continue my narrative. In fact, the amount of objects contained in the drawers can fill an entire gallery.

In 2008, St. Cloud Condominium approached Merrell to restore the Cloud Mattresses ghost sign originally painted by Clifford Olson. The sign was barely visible, but Merrell was able to locate a black and white photo showing the original. Merrell scraped paint samples to match the new color to the original color, primed the wall, sketched the image onto the wall, and painted the sign over the course of 56 hours. 

One of the eight drawers featuring photographs and ephemera.