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mid the low hum of industrial-size fans in a shotgun-style warehouse near bustling South Lamar Boulevard, Gary Martin of Gary Martin Signs hunches over a set of sketches on
onionskin paper, trying to figure out what to do with box lettering that spells out “Powerhouse.” About 20 small paper cups filled with paint sit haphazardly next to paintbrushes, rulers and cans of spray paint on the table behind him. Books, rolls of paper and CD cases line the shelves on the wall and tiny dots of paint speckle everything. The space looks like a cross between a body shop, mad scientist laboratory and art studio. “I might want to electrify them, the way I did Torchy’s,” he says. Martin is a sign painter in Austin, and though his name might not be a household one, his work is famous throughout town. Are you familiar with the mid-century modern, teal-and-red P. Terry’s sign? Martin designed that. What about the charged yellow-andred letters that spell “Torchy’s Tacos” with the little devil in the middle? That was his design, too. The colorful and campy signs at Threadgill’s, Esther’s Follies and Dirty Martin’s Place? All his. He counts himself as one of only a handful of local sign-painting artists—a throwback to the time before computer sketches chipped away at the artistry; and before vinyl printing made it cheap and easy to put up generic signage. “Hand-painted signs and murals add warmth to a city,” says Joe Swec of Joe Swec Sign Painting, who is famous for the “Willie for President” mural on South Congress Avenue. “One of the reasons I started was because when I grew up in the Bay Area and would go into San Francisco, I used to see how all the hand-painted signs gave the city a much more humanistic atmosphere as opposed to a strip mall with manufactured vinyl signs. I wanted to do that for Austin when I moved here.”
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HAND by JENNIFER SIMONSON photography by MELANIE GRIZZEL
