Dixie Drive Thru

I see the Dixie Drive Thru sign every day on my way to work on Poinsett as I drive into Greenville. The restaurant itself closed a while ago (except for a brief refurbishment and reopening for about a month last year). I hear it was a popular place to go years ago. Seems almost everyone in the area is familiar with this mid-twentieth century “Googies” style sign. It’s something of a local icon. The neighborhood around the Dixie has suffered in recent times. The restaurant is empty. But this bright orange sign with its bold arrow and jaunty angles, standing against a clear blue South Carolina sky is a happy artifact from a more optimistic time. In the mornings, it’s a nice welcome to Greenville.

And so, when MAC (Municipal Art Council) announced its second “Flat Out Under Pressure” contest, I decided to do a painting of this familiar image. FOUP is a contest in which artists have just 24 hours to produce a piece. Eight winners are selected and then graphically represented on various large recycle bins spaced along Main Street. This year’s contest was held in early January. Artists present their blank canvases to stamped on the back at MAC’s office on Friday morning. The completed artwork is due the following Saturday morning. They’re then judged and a reception to announce the winners is held Saturday evening. What excited me about this exercise was I would be “forced” to spend 24 hours doing what I love.

But I almost didn’t do it. Mounting obligations begged inconvenience.  Still, I had asked for the time off work, notified Sandra ignore me as much as possible, and so putting the world on hold for a day, I painted.

In addition to garish colors, the Googies style of the sign also uses odd, asymmetrical shapes that break the rectangular plane of a traditional sign. So, I broke the painting’s surface by gluing some of the sign’s elements across its edges. This added dimension to a painting comprised almost entirely of flat shapes. Just how much “depth” I could create in making a flat painting of a flat sign is the fun I had in doing it.

Bonus fun came Saturday evening at MAC’s reception for the contest when Dixie Drive Thru took first place. This came as a total surprise! Icing on the cake! And the icing on the icing of the cake was first prize included a week in a villa in Tuscany…

(And, by the way, I passed by the sign just today, March 21, 2011. There’s a banner hanging from it that reads: Under New Management, Dixie Family Restaurant, Coming Soon)