on Art and Signs

The Cleveland Storefront Renovation program specifically mentions building signs as one of the items the program money can be used for. The local Community Development Corporations encourage business/building owners to create interesting, artistic signs. This brings up the question: can a sign be art or does it always remain a piece of advertising. Many city and government programs earmarking money for public art do not allow a sign to be considered art.

In some recent architecture blogs and even one architecture history tour of Portland, Oregon mentions the iconic Portland Luggage sign at the corner of SW Fourth Street. Not to burst anyone's bubble, but that particular sign is no more than 15 years old. I should know since I designed it. The original structure of the sign was part of the original bank, and then in the 80's it became a Church of Scientology. The sign towered nearly five stories high, capped with an oblique trim, with a dark blue face and gold open pan-channel letters spelling out the church's long name, vertically. The city codes had changed by the 90's when Portland Luggage purchased the building and began renovations and the old sign could not just have the letters changed out, major revisions were now required to bring it in-line with code.

For starters, the sign face (times two since it is double-sided) was about four times the limit based on the building facade and street frontage. This change would reduce the sign to barely reaching the second floor. Furthermore the code required there to be no more exposed neon, and if the sign is to be illuminated, it could not be seen from over 10 city blocks away. Now this last part of the code was ridiculous since at night the human eye can see light from sources over billions of light years away (called stars). There is no way to create an illuminated sign that can't be seen from the nearby mountains let alone 10 city blocks.

The important part of the design process was to simply not accept the code as written. I had long discussions with the code enforcer who disclosed that if the sign was "compelling enough in design" it could be granted a variance. By adding a metal globe to the top of the sign structure I was able to make the sign about 3 1/2 stories tall and keep the internal illumination. I did have to remove any exposed neon, but I was allowed to shine lights up onto the globe from the canopy below.

So the question could be answered, in this case anyway, that the sign is artistic enough to be considered special. The sign is obviously regarded by the architectural community as an icon, for which I am very proud, but is it art? The American Sign Museum in Cincinnati seems to imply by its very existence that not only are signs a piece of nostalgia and items of advertising, but certainly are objects of art.

Recently I convinced a friend to seek funding from the Store Renovation Program to purchase his business sign, but to pursue a local art grant to hire an artist to manufacture the sign, thereby getting two funding streams for one expense. My fingers are crossed he will be successful in gaining both sets of money and getting a terrific sign and a significate piece of public art.

on Lilith

There are two versions of the creation of man in the Bible (Genesis/Bereshit).  In the first God makes Man and Woman out of clay.  Then a little bit further on Adam tells God he is lonely and so God takes a rib from Adam and makes Eve.  According to many ancient sources (Midrash for one) the first woman, who was created from clay like her mate, felt she was equal and not subservient to Adam.  This woman was called Lilith.  She is credited as Adam's first wife, who had her own mind and either decided to go her own way or was banished from the garden.

Then Eve came along and said, "yes Adam, yes Adam" to everything he said.  Of course without the fortitude of Lilith, Eve easily fell prey to the Devil's machinations and ate of the forbidden fruit.  Because of Lilith's supposed defiance and equality she has been raised up as a symbol of pure feminism, and her name has been adopted for the "Lilith Fair" concert series and has been used widely in Wiccan and other non-Christian religions and organizations.

In some earlier writings Lilith mated with an Archangel named Samael.  Then in later writings she became a seductress and a demoness.  Most of these depict Lilith as a demon sent by the Devil to prey upon young men to defile themselves; in other words the original succubus.

I think it's kind of amazing how much folklore, tales, history, and religious text can evolve from a simple discrepancy in the Bible.

on Cursive

I just read an article in the Times the other day regarding how American schools are no longer teaching cursive handwriting.  The author made two points to bemoan this loss: 1.  how will kids be able to read the original Declaration of Independence, and 2.  how will people sign their names?

First of all, in the interest of full disclosure, I have always despised cursive.  It is an invention that came about in the mid century to replace an older "archaic" form of handwriting that was supposed to be easier to learn and easier to read.  The concept was to make all handwriting look the same.  Each letter was supposed to be constructed identically by each individual in such a way as to remove anything remotely individual.  This means that even signatures were supposed to be non-individualistic, which of course is a legal problem.  More on this a bit later.

In the seventh grade my science teacher required everyone to take copious notes and then turn in a finished notebook at the end of the term.  My hand would ache and I simply could not keep up. Cursive handwriting was slow and difficult for me to master.  After a few dozen pages, I realized I couldn't read what I had written.  I decided to change my own handwriting.  I sat down and developed a new style of written alphabet full of flourishes and interesting shapes.  Then, after a week or so of honing, the curly-cues and difficult line-work smoothed out.  It was a form of printing with stylized letters.  By forcing myself to write in this new alphabet, and only in this new form, I completely changed the way I wrote from that day forward.  Although my handwriting was eventually reshaped by tedious lettering assignments in Architectural Calligraphy, many of the letter shapes have remained in my day-to-day hand writing.

Back to the article:  The Declaration of Independence is not written in cursive.  It is written in a form of calligraphy where many of the lower case letters are connected to one another but many are not.  It is very readable because most of the letters are simply italicized versions of present-day fonts with obvious exceptions being the letters "s", "r" and the capital "Q".  Even someone who has never once seen these versions of these particular letters can figure out what the document says, just as someone in present day can understand the old word: "Congreff" even though the s's look like lower case f's.  As for the signatures on the document, they are as different from each other as they are from the text itself.

This leads me to the second point of the article, that kids won't learn how to sign their names. A signature is an individual, stylized piece of writing.  If the students learned cursive the way it was meant to be taught, their signatures would, in no way, be individualistic.  I can recognize my own signature in a split second. Yet, my signature is really made up of those stylized printed letters and not cursive. Hand printing is still an individualistic style of writing, regardless of whether or not the letters connect to each other.  The human hand will always make little movements with repetitive use that are markedly individual.

So I say, let this old form of handwriting simply die out and fade away.  It has served it's usefulness and has become passe.  Just as the older forms of writing have passed on, this one should be allowed to disappear.  Sure, we can feel its loss, just as some are complaining about old incandescent light bulbs going away, but we shouldn't cling to it just because it may have had a purpose one time, long ago.  Let it go people.  Let it go.