The Sign Painters

Film maker Faythe Levine has a new obessesion. Levine, who directed the DIY documentary Handmade Nation has recently turned her attention to the lives and craft of American sign painters. Nearly invisible, there are still hundreds of men and women in this country who carefully paint signs and advertisements on shop windows, sandwich-boards, boats, cars, billboards, playgrounds, farmers markets, hot dog stands and theme parks. Levine, along with co-director Sam Macon is in the midst of creating The Sign Painter a documentary film chronicling the stories of modern day painters and legends of the craft. The film includes interviews with contemporary sign painters like Seattle's own Sean Barton, and also meets artists like Rey Giese who has been a sign painter for 75 years and continues to work.There is no release date yet for the film, but Levine is maintaining both a blog and a Flickr account to document the process.