The New York Times described the book, Sign Painters, by Faythe Levine and Sam Macon, as “A lovely paean to a vanishing art…a funky and necessary work of preservation” but, for me, just one look at the title and the cover was all it took: a copy of Sign Painters was quickly in my possession. The featured sign painters and accompanying photos actually caused a bit of nostalgia for the ubiquitous yellow labeled can of Sign Painters’ One Shot.

In March the documentary film, Sign Painters, opened at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The trailer, expertly edited to the unlikely background of Edvard Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King from Peer Gynt, makes me hope that there will eventually be a northeast Ohio screening.