Sean Starr was included as one of the featured artists in the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft’s exhibition For Hire: Contemporary Sign Painting in America which ran from September 2017 through January 2018.

Starr was asked to demonstrate the gold leaf on glass process for museum attendees as well as to display his sign kit from 2005 with the words “This Box Kills Corporate Lies” inspired by the phrase painted on folk singer Woody Guthrie’s guitar “This Machine Kills Fascists.”

“But there was an upside for me. Denton, Texas, sign painters Sean and Kayleigh Starr were there that day, working on their contribution to the exhibition in the making. They gave me a cram-course tutorial in what the show, and sign painting, are all about. First, a visual tutorial as I watched them apply gold leaf to glass, wielding a wide, supple brush, with near-continuous, sensual gestures: a swipe of the brush against the hair (to dissipate static electricity?), a swoop down to scoop up the gold leaf, a sweep across the glass to apply it in its proper spot.

And then Sean opened my eyes to sign painting with some personal history about how he had followed his father into the field and then faced seismic career and craft changes when digital sign technology took over from hand painting in the 1980s. It was an adapt, migrate or perish crisis for tens of thousands of sign painters all over the world, working in a tradition going back centuries that was suddenly blown apart. Sean, being young, adapted, after a period of migration, and found a satisfying living applying his traditional craft in the niche market that still exists for hand-painted signs.”

Houston Press
Randy Tibbits
October, 2017