ENTROPY
One-eyed nun
© Jud Burgess 2003
WOW
Off Interstate 10 east of Phoenix, AZ
© Jud Burgess 2011
Color TV and cactus
Off Interstate 10 east of Phoenix, AZ
© Jud Burgess 2011
Shady Grove Restaurant
Off Interstate 10 east of Phoenix, AZ
© Jud Burgess 2011
Little Red Ice House, side one
Highway 90 between Marfa and Valentine, TX
© Jud Burgess 2011
Little Red Ice House, side two
Highway 90 between Marfa and Valentine, TX
© Jud Burgess 2011
I guess you can say I have a thing for cheap, painted women. This 4 ft. hand painted metal sign on wood with a bee-hived woman is my all-time favorite and currently hangs in the conference room. Found her languishing on the sidelot of the now defunct Book Gallery. Every time I took the long way to work, she'd be there smiling at me as I drove by. After several months of this, I finally stopped the car and met with the bookstore owners son and ended up taking her back to work. If you look closely at the sign, you’ll find a history of three different versions that have risen to the surface after the years gone by. You can't create this kind of art, it takes decades of life and death / purpose and neglect to end up with this.
This beautiful portrait in the process of deterioration hangs in my office today. Probably done by an itinerant portrait painter in the 1800's. I love the way he spent his time capturing her face while doing the rest in quick and lively brushstrokes. This woman’s portrait sat in a barn for several decades fading into obscurity until her memory was resurrected for at least as long as the paint holds to the canvas.
What makes this sign in my collection so fun is the talk bubble with the word BIMBO which is actually the name of a Mexican loaf of bread but we all know what it means in English. Translated it says “Get your Bimbo here.” I also like the way that the image has become a negative of itself as the sun burned out the color and the rust took over. The touch of blue, the white space, the line work all makes for a nicely done design. Found it on the side of an old Mexican neighborhood corner store not far from the mountainside near Scenic Drive. I bought it from the store clerk who first asked the BIMBO salespeople if he could get a new sign because the old sign had seen better days. He got his new sign and I got the priceless one.
My son Nathan and I did some urban exploration (code for trespassing on private property) a few years ago. I'd spotted an abandoned lot along the freeway that was walled in except for a corner where a few loose boards covered up an entry point. We squeezed in and found all sorts of junk. We pulled up an interestingly worn piece of metal that was under an 18-wheeler trailer and when we flipped it over...voila! A great piece of typographic art. I love the flat black bars that were used for chalking in the numbers.