Obarts: signs of the times

Brian Bruening and Frederique Boudouani hold Obart's latest sign for their restaurant, Schera's.

September 3, 2008
by Bryce Durbin

Look around Elkader and you'll see signs of Ed Olson. Literally. Olson has been making signs for this community and the surrounding area since the early 1960s.

When he was hired by the Griffith Press in the early 1960s, his job duties included editor, news editor and advertising director of the Clayton County Register. When laying out ads, if the clip art available didn't suffice, Olson would draw his own.

The experience with advertising parlayed itself into sign making and job printing.

Olson's work has also included designing logos, menus, election campaign posters and even coats-of-arms.

"In the neighborhood I lived in, just about everybody in a two-block area had a coat-of-arms," says Olson. "That was just a hobby - I never charged for them."

Before the rise of computer-designed campaign billboards, Olson painted them. That led to more and more work. After stints at the Register, as mayor and as the owner of a Sears catalog franchise, Olson made another career change. In 1990, Olson sold the Sears catalog franchise to open Olson Business and Art Service, commonly known as Obarts, which sold office and art supplies and did layout design.

That same year, Olson suffered a heart attack that limited the amount of physical work he could do, so sign making never became a full-time occupation.

Nevertheless, using self-taught skills he had been utilizing since his army days when he would paint oil portraits from his buddies' girlfriends' photos, Olson took on a number of jobs. People turned to him when they were looking for something unique.

"There aren't too many pure sign artists around anymore (who) can paint freehand and have all these fonts in their head," says Olson.

The smaller demand for the handmade sign puts Olson's skill in sharper relief. "You can't compete with computers except for something you really want to personalize, like I did with Schera's," says Olson. "I think there are certain signs that deserve personal attention or something to make them look a little bit special."

Olson uses a sign projector to enlarge his drawing to a suitable scale, which saves him about a third of the time it used to take. At one point, Olson had three or four entire fonts memorized, but admits he is a bit rusty with them since he started using the sign projector.

Olson's heart condition keeps him from overworking. "I only do now what's fun for me to do," he says.

Many iconic Elkader locations feature signs Olson designed or made - the character on 2-Mit Burgers' sign, for example. Other signs include those for The Buttery, Treats, the Backstitch, and Holly's Bridal. His most recent creation is the new sign for Schera's Restaurant.

The most ambitious sign Olson made was for a campground in Clayton known as Paradise Valley at the time. The sign featured eight figures with cutout heads for kids to put their faces through.

Olson's approach to designing signs is basically the same as for designing ads - what tells the story of a business. But "it doesn't always work out that way," he says with a laugh. Olson creates the signs in his shop, often out of wood and using a variety of sign paints.

Olson was friends with another sign painter in Elkader, Gus Miller. He says he "supplemented" Miller's work and was never in real competition because he always had another income.

In retirement, Olson does not actively seek out sign making jobs, but by word-of-mouth they still manage to find him. Continuing this tradition in his hometown and around the county, Olson has made a visible mark on the landscape of Northeast Iowa.

Contact

The Clayton County Register
106 Cedar Street NW • PO Box 130
Elkader, IA 52043
(563) 245-1311
FAX: (563) 245-1312
ccrnews@alpinecom.net