By signcraft
Posted on Monday, September 30th, 2024
Kelsey and Andrew McClellan are a Chicago-based sign painting team with a penchant for gold leaf window signs—yet are equally comfortable painting 30-foot-tall letters ten floors up. Originally from Denver, Colorado, they moved to Chicago in 2012 to attend a graduate painting program at School of the Art Institute of Chicago. From there, things took a hard turn into hand lettering and gold leaf. Andrew, now 39, told us the story:
Their roots: We got interested in signs and sign painting back in Denver but knew very little about it. When we got to Chicago we got in contact with Stephen Reynolds, a very talented retired sign painter. He showed us the basics—the materials, the brushes, how to use quills and all the fundamentals of hand lettering. We were very ignorant—really just starting from scratch.
Their business name: We are both really into music and collect Jamaican music, like old reggae. There’s a well-known Jamaican musician/producer by the name of Lee “Scratch” Perry who said “the drums and the bass were the heart and the bone of the music…” It inspired the name for our business. We were young, and if you had told us we would have made it and be doing this as a profession ten years from now it might have been, “Well, maybe we should choose a different name…” But it still works for us.
Discovering gold window signs: Our first studio was right downtown off Michigan Avenue, and that’s where we were first exposed to the beautiful gold leaf window signs of downtown Chicago. We were just enamored with these signs. We had no idea how they were made and they seemed very magical. Thankfully, one of the signs was signed “Chicagold”. We did a little research and we learned that Robert Freese was the man behind Chicagold.
Kelsey got the courage to give him a call—even though I told her not to bother. I told her “these old timers are not going to want to talk to us…” She did anyway and like so many things in life, it was very good timing.
Robert was willing to pass along the craft and we were very eager to learn. Our shared love of jazz music helped make the connection, and he started showing us the craft of gold leaf signs. He’s a great person and a natural teacher. We did our first gold window in 2014. We are incredibly lucky to have him be open to helping us learn.
Connecting with Bob Behounek: Of course before we arrived in Chicago, we already knew of Bob Behounek, the legendary Chicago sign painter. If you’re involved with sign painting anywhere on the planet, you should know who he is. It was a while before we met him personally, though. Our first shop had a small gallery out front where we had shows, and the sign shop was in the back.
We had a show of sign work that included the work of about 40 sign painters from across the US. Bob came to see that and that’s how we first met. He is really an amazing person and an incredible designer and sign painter. He has so much passion for everything that it makes you excited just talking with him. He’s so positive. He’s seen a lot but always seems to just see the bright side.
Rescuing two vintage wall signs: A couple years ago we heard about a few ghost signs that were exposed when the façade was removed from an old building here. [See “Help save these Chicago ghost signs”.] We were able to save two of them and one is now in the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati. That was a series of lucky breaks all in a row.
We first saw them on Twitter shortly after the siding that covered them was taken off. The signs were perfectly preserved, but the building was going to be razed. We went there a few hours after we saw it on social media. There were others there taking photos and saying it was too bad they couldn’t be saved.
We figured we might as well try, even though it seemed totally crazy. We had never done anything like that and didn’t know where to start. We contacted the company doing the project, and it just so happened that we had done some signs for them a few months before.
We sent them an email explaining that we wanted to save the signs, fully expecting them to say it was not possible because of time constraints or insurance issues. Within five minutes, though, we got a message saying “Go for it. You’ve got 30 days until the building comes down.”
We got a bid for the scaffolding we would need to work from, but it was over 12 grand. So we got on GoFundMe.com and ran a campaign to raise the money, which was also something we had never done before. It worked great. The TV news got involved and Bob was interviewed several times. Within a week we had raised all the money and within two weeks we got Tod Swormstedt of the American Sign Museum involved.
Serendipitously there happened to be a wall space in the new wing of the Museum to accommodate one of the signs, which was a bread advertisement. It was the exact size. Tod came up and helped us remove the siding from the building. We cut it with a reciprocating saw and took it down, piece by piece, to go to the Museum.
The book project: The wall signs led to a book that we are putting together, “The Golden Era of Sign Design, The Rediscovered Sketches of Beverly Sign Co.” The bread ad was signed “Briggs Outdoor Adv. Co.” We learned that it was the work of Jack Briggs, who was one of the founders of Beverly Sign Co., a legendary Chicago sign company. At that point, Bob told us that he had hundreds of sketches done by Beverly Signs that had been saved from the dumpster by Danny Collier.
Bob had wanted to do a book with the sketches for years and asked us if we wanted to do that. It’s not a money-making venture—it’s a passion project. We wanted to do it just to do it. So we fired up Kickstarter.com, got the project funded and got to work. We’ve become closer friends with Bob as a result and have interviewed a lot of people with connections to Beverly, including Danny Collier.
Some great stories have come out of all this. One of our favorites is that there is a small drawing in the book for “John’s Hardware & Bicycles” which includes this portrait of a man’s face. Kelsey looked it up and it turns out that they are still in business. 99% of all the other businesses in the book are gone—but not this one.
It’s down on Chicago’s South Side, so we headed down there to pay a visit. Lo and behold, John is still there. And he’s still running the shop. And he looks just like he did in the portrait on the sign! We did a great interview and had a great time, too.
Launch date: We’re supposed to get the books at the end of October. It’s a 9-by-12-in. hardcover book, cloth-bound and foil stamped. It’s about 210 pages and includes several fold-out pages so that the drawings are almost at full scale. It’s inspired by the format and production of some of the great old sign books. There are about 140 sketches in there. Bob hand lettered all the headings and page numbers.
More to come: Getting the book together has inspired us to do some more books. Two that are on the horizon are the history of gold leaf in Chicago and the history of stock car lettering in Chicago. There’s a lot of documentation on stock car lettering, and many of the folks who did it are still alive. And Bob has unlimited enthusiasm for stock car lettering!
The shop: Our current shop is on the North Side, just off Western Avenue. It’s about 1,000 square feet, but we’re hoping to find more space in the future. Kelsey and I work alone, and we’re big collectors of ephemera of all kinds—work from the turn of the century, old glass signs, and all sorts of stuff. The shop looks as much like a museum as it does a sign shop.
We’ve enjoyed the opportunity to travel and doing signs around the county. In the past year we’ve worked in 18 states, including doing some gold leaf signs in Alaska and super graphics for warehouses in New Jersey.
Their sign work: All of our work is sign painting and large-scale graphics. About 85% of our work is gold leaf work and the rest is miscellaneous sign work. We like doing supergraphics, those really big jobs on walls and roofs. We’ve been fortunate to do them from coast to coast. They’re a huge challenge but really fun to do.
It’s so important to us to carry on the tradition of gold leaf signs here in the city. It’s a driving force of our work. At one point, Robert was concerned that the tradition was going to die with him. We take a lot of pride in continuing that going forward and carrying Robert’s legacy on. It’s very humbling.
So much outstanding sign design has been done in the Chicago area over the years. It’s really amazing. Maybe it’s because the winters are so cold that there’s really nothing to do except be inside and draw sign layouts!
Kelsey, Robert Frese and Andrew
Vintage signs on the shop wall
When demolition exposed this wall sign, Kelsey and Andrew took it upon themselves to save it. It was remove board by board and installed at the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio.
