One of my greatest pleasures as a miniaturist is taking a place or a moment from the past and shrinking it down to something I can hold in my hands. Often I am working on a commission, preserving someone else’s treasured family home or the bar where they first met their spouse, but recently I decided to put some time aside to make something for myself.
The sign painter’s studio is heavily inspired by my mother, one of very few female sign painters working in the 1970s and 80s. I vividly recall her coming home smelling of enamel paint and turpentine, and her hands splattered with vibrant colours. She had usually spent the day high up on a ladder, painting the side of a truck, holed up in the cavernous sign shop making paper signs for grocery store windows, or at a marina meticulously gilding gold leaf names onto boats.
Eventually, she turned the basement of our house into a studio and worked for herself. A drafting table, myriad cans of paint, a collection of scrupulously cared for brushes, paint splatter on the floor—these were the things that surrounded me as a child. I spent many hours watching her sketch out templates, create perfect letterforms, and paint each element with laser-like precision.