My obsession with lettering
began when I went to a stock car race
and I thought, "Wow, look at those cars!"
and back then everything hand-lettered
and I would come home
and make them exactly as I could
Sometimes in school I would make these posters
for "there's a prom coming" or a dance or this or that
and I liked that I could make something nice
and people knew it. I love that feeling
so then I got a high school part time job at a sign shop
and I saw all that and it's like,
"Well, you can do this. You can make a living
This is pretty cool. This is for me"
After high school graduation I knew I was going right to a sign school
That was nine months
Got a job back at the place that I was working at in high school
Said, "I'm set"
And then all of a sudden that sign shop got a different owner
and everything was collapsing
somebody would get fired almost once a week
and all of a sudden here it came
"Well, we've got to let you go"
so I just bummed around Mazeppa here for a while
did a few signs, never thought about going on my own or anything
because I was only 19 I was too scared
I thought, "Well, I always liked the service
I liked the uniform my dad was in, that's what I'll do"
I was in for three years
When I came back from the army I really wasn't with my buddies anymore
because they had went off and got jobs and married
and went to college and had kids
I'm starting all over again
I'd built a little garage onto our little house here in Mazeppa
and that was my first sign shop
and I was scared
It was like "Oh my God, what am I doing?"
But it was really that scared point
that I see a lot of people today that ask me "Well, how did you do that?
What do you think I should do?"
"Just go for it!"
Here's one of the things I like about painting an "O" or something
or painting a curve
is that I can hear that brush going around the corner
It's like a car on two tires
You know?
And you know just where to put the brake on and when not to
Yeah
We started seeing all these old books
Beautiful old books with beautiful illustrations and designs and things
that were actually signs
and some of the work that was being done
I didn't see the connection there
We wanted to bring some of that back into the trade
and we wanted to bring the art back into the trade
One of the reasons I got interested in sign painting at all
was because I had always admired-- I had this ideal image of the sign painter
that was really confident, would show up somewhere
lay out a couple of lines and do something with speed and confidence
and it looked really good, you know?
And that's you!
- That was fun - Got to do more of these
Absolutely!
- Love it - Yeah
My name's Mike Meyer
I'm a sign painter from Mazeppa, Minnesota
It's all I've ever wanted to do
It's all I'm ever going to do
There's only one school left in the United States
That's the Los Angeles Trade Tech
There used to be about six, seven, eight of them
and I think it's really my job and other people's jobs
to carry this on
Nobody really said, "Hey, don't run over the hill
like the rest of the rats. Go the other way"
So that's what I did
and I've never looked back and just pushed it out there
and the biggest compliment is when somebody comes up
and says, "Can you show me how to do what you do?"