BELLOWS FALLS — Frank Hawkins is a holdout in a vanishing art. He is an adept in the old-fashioned trade of sign painting, as were his father, his grandfather, and his uncle. He is proud to be, he says, a “brush man.”
His Main Street studio is full of handcrafted signs and the tools for making them. Hawkins makes the kind of signs that have all but disappeared in this age of computer-aided design, internally lit plastic signs, and vinyl lettering. The rotary phone on his desk reflects his taste in technology.
Hawkins tends toward a libertarian outlook; it rankles him that his craft is subject to extensive regulation.
He points out that advertising has become ubiquitous - Dumpsters sport the logos of the corporations that own them; vending machines are emblazoned with the brands of soft-drink manufacturers - but that signs are singled out for the attention of lawmakers and zoning boards.
“It's the only form of advertising that has any control over it,” Hawkins says. “That's always kind of ticked me off.”
Perhaps that's why when he painted a mural on the wall outside his studio, bearing the words “Welcome to Bellows Falls: 'A friendly place to hang your hat'," he didn't apply for a permit. He knew he was supposed to get one, and he knew the mural was illegal under the village's regulations. He hoped to be challenged, but he was not.
Six months ago, Hawkins completed another mural, this time for the Bellows Falls Downtown Development Alliance, which paid him $4,000 to design and paint it on the side of the barn by the Exit 6 off-ramp near Interstate 91.
Hawkins says he knew he would violate Vermont's billboard law - “All I've ever dealt with has been zoning laws ... it's a constant in the sign business,” he says - and told the business group as much.
Ellen Howard, the town's zoning administrator, issued a permit for the mural but warned that the group should check with the state, also.
But that advice wasn't heeded - perhaps, as BFDDA spokesman Charlie Hunter suggests, because the group depends on volunteers, and reviewing the state billboard law was something that "fell through the cracks."
The mural shows a family cruising in an open-topped sedan. It looks, quite deliberately, like a 1950s postcard writ large across the barn's clapboards.
“See Bellows Falls,” the sign urges, and directs those who would do so “2½ miles south on Route 5.”
This time, Hawkins's mural caught the attention of the authorities, in this case the Travel Information Council, a seven-member body charged with implementing Vermont's sign laws.
On Feb. 20 the Council sent BFDDA a letter informing the group that the mural is illegal and could not remain. The mural, according to the council, violates Vermont's billboard law by facing a limited access highway (an off-ramp of I-91) and exceeding the 64 square feet permitted for a town welcome sign.
A growing eyesore, a successful remedy
As the automotive age dawned in America, advertisers realized they could capture motorists' attention as they sped along by placing signs big enough for motorists to read while in motion along roads.
The industry spawned by that realization exploded with the development of the Interstate Highway System, and in 2004 yielded revenue of $5.8 billion, according to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America.
By the 1960s, billboards had become ubiquitous enough to be one of the primary targets of the “Beautify America” campaign championed by Lady Bird Johnson, then the first lady. In 1965 Congress passed the Highway Beautification Act, intended to regulate roadside advertising.
Vermont was the first state to follow suit, in 1968, with the billboard law now in force, banning signs along limited access highways. Although the law was controversial and was strongly opposed by businesses and farmers, it was finally adopted with a prefatory acknowledgement by the legislature that tourism was an important and growing part of the Vermont economy and that “the scattering of outdoor advertising throughout the state is detrimental to the preservation of ... scenic resources....”
Today, Vermont is one of only four states to have passed such legislation.
Forty years later, opponents of the billboard law are scarce. The law has done a great deal to perserve the Vermont landscapes valued by both residents and visitors. As a brand, “Vermont” is surely among the most successful and widely recognized; the state's name is synomymous with bucolic beauty, handcraft, and quirky charm. Proponents of the law find roads uncluttered by what billboard opponents call “litter on a stick” are essential to the Vermont experience.
Scenic America, an organization that carries the torch of Lady Bird Johnson's Beautify America campaign, cites several polls showing that Americans in general overwhelmingly oppose the proliferation of billboards. Vermont's achievement in pushing back the tide of roadside advertising is the envy of many whose journeys are beset at every turn by an army of giant signs bearing commercial messages.
And yet, some wonder if elimination of Fred Hawkins's “See Bellows Falls” mural is the proper consequence of a law intended to promote beautification.
Even the counsel for the Travel Information Council, John Kessler, called the mural “beautiful.” It is a far cry from a typical billboard both in style and in the way it fits into the landscape, painted as it is on that quintessential Vermont icon, the barn.
Art or advertising?
“I know that people support the billboard [law],” says Leslie Marston, on whose barn the mural is painted. “It makes Vermont a special place, not having all those billboards.”
But Marston approves of the mural, and donated the use of her barn wall. “We like the art that was put into it - it's basically art with a message.”
BFDAA's Charlie Hunter says the group's purpose in commissioning the mural was “to have Frank Hawkins do a beautiful work of art,” as a “northern gateway” for the village, an appropriate welcome to a place allied with the creative economy.
Hunter points out an irony: the mural depicts not the village of Bellows Falls, but an automobile. It is, he says, “a commentary on the rise of the automobile culture,” which is largely to blame for the decline of downtown areas.
The mural's painter says that his sign painting is not fine art. But in a statement about his work, Hawkins writes of the “life and vitality” of hand-lettered messages, and mourns the loss of “the exuberance, charm and sometimes the naivete which hand-lettered, hand-made signs brought to our public world.”
Hawkins is acutely aware of the nostalgia work like his arouses. “I hope my art will help clear the dust from a corner of our collective consciousness,” he writes, “and allow ourselves to smile, perhaps even wistfully, and say, 'I remember.'”
Tim Segar, a member of the visual arts faculty at Marlboro College, agrees that the mural clearly has “nostalgic appeal,” with an image that is “a familiar trope from billboards of the '50s and '60s.” While Segar declines the role of arbiter of art versus non-art, he says that “Context is everything in this regard.”
“It would seem that its context is the world of signage,” Segar notes.
Since Vermont's billboard law was not intended to outlaw art, the issue could come down to where one draws the line between commercial signage and creative expression.
“It's not illegal to paint an art mural,” said Elizabeth Kennett of Rochester, a member of the Travel Information Council.
BFDAA members have considered removing the words, the aspect of the mural that most clearly tilts the work toward the category of signage.
Such a modification might be sufficient to make the mural legal, said John Zicconi, a spokesman for the Vermont Agency of Transportation, which works with the Travel Information Council, although the council is an independent entity.
On the other hand, it is easy to find art historical and contemporary examples of art that include words. It's also true that old, painted barn advertisements - especially the once-common Mail Pouch tobacco ads in the Midwest - are treated as landmarks and aesthetic treasures by some devotees.
Hunter says, however, that such considerations are “a non-issue for the state.” It is a testament to how well-written - how impartial - the law is, he says, that it applies to the mural even though, in his view, it is “obviously art.”
State law defines a sign as “any structure, display, device or representation, either temporary or permanent, portable or ground-mounted, which is designed or used to advertise or call attention to any thing, person, business, activity or place and is visible from any highway or other right-of-way.” The very broad definition could apply to many works of art as well as to signs.
For Hawkins, his mural is a cut-and-dried case.
“To me it's a billboard,” he says. “I don't agree with the law, but if it is a law, [the mural is] wrong.”
For the Travel Information Council, although its members might personally have no objection to the mural, the situation has been equally unambiguous: the mural meets the definition of a sign, and it breaks the law, so it must come down.
But the council chose not to issue a direct order to remove the mural or to levy fines - instead asking for voluntary compliance by June. By so doing, it allowed BFDAA time to consider its options.
It also has allowed the legislature time to take special action.
A special exemption
BFDAA has turned to local legislators for help and found an ally in state Senate President Pro-tem Peter Shumlin (D-Putney), who sponsored an amendment to the transportation bill on the mural's behalf.
Although it seems language was considered that would have made a certain class of signs newly legal under Vermont law, the amendment as submitted simply exempts the Bellow Falls mural from the provisions of the billboard law, without undertaking any broader revision of the regulations.
As of April 22, the amended bill passed the Senate and went to a joint resolution committee, where, according to Shumlin's office, the amendment is virtually certain to remain intact.
With the legislature certain to have completed its session and to have dealt with the transportation bill by June, the issue will most likely be resolved before the Travel Information Council's deadline.