And here’s a crucial detail: almost all of them seemed to have been painted by a single hand. I didn’t have the imagination back then to seek out the author of all this work. But there was clearly enough demand to sustain a professional career of some length, to judge from the number of signs and their varying ages, some brand-new and gleaming, some weathered and yellowed. Taken en masse, the hand lettering of this one person brought a unity to the Dixwell neighborhood, a sense of specific, place-based identity that digitally printed or vinyl-cut texts could never have provided. Just as a handwritten letter contains more of its writer’s personality than an email, the crafting of these signs imbued New Haven’s urban landscape with a degree of humanity, which would seem to be the one commodity that is easiest to come by but, in practice, is awfully difficult to find. The anonymous “Master of Dixwell” (as I like to call him—or, who knows, maybe her?) was of course not unique. Many other cities, other neighborhoods, have had such public scribes. Some stick to the basics: letters on a blank white or yellow background, so the words jump out as you pass by at thirty-five miles an hour. Other painters enliven their work with images, or decorative motifs, or maybe make the sign itself into a sculptural object. Fortunately Faythe Levine and Sam Macon have been finding these skilled practitioners and recording their methods, their stories, and their art. Levine could not be better suited to the task. Her first major project, Handmade Nation, looked at a new subculture of “crafters” for whom making things, rather than buying them, is an activity infused with political, emotional, and aesthetic meaning. In taking up the subject of sign painters, Levine is redirecting her attention to a less fashionable group, perhaps, not so much a subculture as a dispersed and informal guild. But she is continuing to show us how practicing a skill can be a whole way of life.
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SI G N PA INTERS