Collaborate, Create, Revitalize
Friends of the Orphan Signs (FOS) is a collaborative public art organization of artist-educators that creatively revitalizes abandoned or unused road signs with artwork, with a particular focus along historic Route 66 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. FOS facilitates innovative collaborations and educational workshops with local communities with the aim of designing new imagery to install in the signs as public art pieces. We work to revitalize the visual landscape of disinvested neighborhoods while centering the voices of its residents. Our signs are public, accessible on foot and in car, and are on major thoroughfares throughout Albuquerque.
Since 2010, FOS has worked to preserve relics of past roadside culture, as many orphan signs (signs currently on empty lots or unused by the current occupants) are deemed unworthy of restoration. These signs are called "orphans" by the historic preservation community. We recognize the historic value of orphans and we develop dynamic, community-oriented, public art projects that utilize these structures as sites for temporary and permanent public artwork.
Our projects also encompass gallery exhibitions and outdoor video screenings meant to inspire broad public participation in the reimagining of signs and empty lots as sites for artworks.
Central and San Mateo, 2010
The Old El Sarape Sign, reinvented as Revivir, made with students from Highland High School
Statement from our Director, Ellen Babcock
“I was fascinated by their stance of mute address, both melancholy and resolute, and by the way that their emptiness transcended the banality of surrounding advertising along route 66.”
Original engineering sketch for the El Sarape sign
Friends of the Orphan Signs has come out of my interest in material salvaging and reuse, and in social practice as an art form that destabilizes distinctions between producers and consumers of visual culture and offers opportunities to engage in open-ended collaboration with many sorts of people.
Interest in sculptural forms with social or civic connotations, combined with a predilection for broken things, primed me to perceive the empty road signs that line eastern Central Avenue as evocative sites of potential when I moved to Albuquerque in 2009.
I was fascinated by their stance of mute address, both melancholy and resolute, and by the way that their emptiness transcended the banality of surrounding advertising along route 66. Aware that this state was transitory, and that the signs would likely be either torn down or refilled with advertising, I wanted to launch an experiment with them. I decided to make art sited in the historic road signs with a collaborative genesis.
The camaraderie I enjoy from this work is underpinned by an exploration of a particular local history of sign production. My research takes me into the basement archives of sign companies and into the top floor corner offices of urban planners and City Hall officials as I compile a view of Albuquerque history from this very particular angle, an angle from which to make unique and mysterious contributions to the roadside landscape.
The mute address of empty signs can become despairing over time, less so if broken by an unexpected voice.
—Ellen Babcock, Founding Director Friends of the Orphan Signs
The Zeon Files
Ellen’s interest in signs led her to discover a treasure trove of architectural sign drawings sitting in the sun in the Zeon Signs shop yard. She partnered with Mark Childs to write The Zeon Files, published May 2016 by The University of New Mexico Press.
Synopsis:
In the mid-twentieth century Eddie's Inferno Cocktail Lounge, Bunny Bread, Paris Shoe Shop, and many other businesses throughout New Mexico and the Southwest displayed eye-catching roadside signs created by the Zeon Corporation. These works of commercial art featured unique designs, irregular shapes, dynamic compositions, and neon light. The legendary fiesta dancer at the Albuquerque Terrace Drive-In theater, for example, was well-known for the grace of its lines, its enormous size, and its flashing neon skirt. Created during a time before the simplified icons of major chains, many of these culturally significant artworks no longer exist. The Zeon Files rescues these historic artifacts from obscurity, presenting a collection of the working drawings of historic Route 66-era signs. In addition to presenting a visually rich archive, the authors discuss the working methods of design and construction and the craft of drafting techniques during this innovative era of American sign making.
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