New Haven Independent

There are different ways of painting the town. LeRoy Parks has managed to do it literally. From a barber shop on Orchard Street to a a food cart on the Boulevard to a coffee house on Howe to an Italian deli in Wooster Square to a Mexican restaurant on Grand Avenue, there he is, speaking in signs. His calligraphy alone makes his work identifiable, the portraits and illuminations and murals which often accompany it are lessons in public art that we tend to dismiss into the ordinary.

Handmade signage is a tradition no longer much honored, what with digital billboards and plastic lettering. I remember a man who had a small shop on the corner of Ferry and Lombard in Fair Haven, where he turned out what were once those ubiquitous paper signs posted in butcher shop windows with bright red litanies of the latest offerings from the slaughterhouse. These silent demands for our attention which the photographers Eugene Atget and Walker Evans once so avidly catalogued, are rare enough now for us to stop and look, before the electronic din erases them altogether.

Object Lesson #12
Object Lesson #11
Object Lesson #10
Object Lesson #9
Object Lesson #8
Object Lesson #7
Object Lessons #5 & #6
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Object Lesson #3
Object Lesson#2
Object Lesson #1