I have an interesting sign story... it's about a very dear old friend of mine named Kim, an artist whose work is so stunningly beautiful, human and compassionate it can move people to tears. He is considered a national treasure in his home country, Korea, and has been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world. The first piece of his I saw in person was in a traveling exhibit at the Avery Brundage wing of the DeYoung museum in San Francisco. From across the hall it caught my eye and I stood in front it in awe for a long time before I realized it was by my friend.
Anyway, he got a commission to do some signs for the Coors beer company in Denver. Billboards that would go around the Southwest. I was stunned when I first heard this but then he told me what the project involved. The billboards would be original oil paintings created on-site. Kim would live on the billboard for as long as it took and had no restrictions as to what the painting was. I couldn't believe Kim was doing billboards, but he was very excited about the project. He intended to paint a testimony to the human condition, something that every passerby would be affected by. Something that would make people feel, in their hearts, that all men were worthy of their kindness and all people are united in their need for understanding and love. He was planning to spend at least a couple months at the site for each painting. Living in a small tent up on the billboard's platform somewhere on a lonely stretch of American highway.
To advertise Coors beer.
I never saw any of the signs but I thought someone should have made a documentary film about it. Kim came to visit us after the first one was done and he was preparing for the next one. He seemed changed in a way, like he had found an even deeper truth about humanity and was moved to obsession by it. He used homeless people as models, portraying in graphic detail the intellectual struggle of incongruities in the American dream. The similarity of a broken, hopeless life vs one with material wealth and how the personal cataclysm of loneliness made both their lives equally desperate for meaning.
I spent a fair amount of years in marketing and I never heard of a stranger or more brilliant way to advertise a product using a sign. I don't know if it was considered a successful campaign by Coors, or how the project turned out. I never saw Kim again, we moved, he moved, our phone numbers changed and sadly I lost touch with him. But I will never forget this man, or his incredible vision, or the hope I felt for humanity, knowing his overwhelming compassion was being presented to the world as an image on the highway. Something that would be a moment's impression as you fly down the road to a destination that might benefit from the thoughts the Coors beer sign placed in your subconscious mind. (and in your heart)
