Re: Cracked By Team Signmaker 2007 Rhino
Latrisha Adan
But that doesn't mean the owner of Adams-based WHITCO lacks creativity. Like many of Berkshire County's signmakers, Whitney draws from an artistic background to fabricate signs out of primarily wood and metal, including a bracketed model at AJ's Trailside Pub and a carved barrel at Brava in Lenox. Still, the longtime sculptor resists embellishment in his sign work because he wants to best serve his commercial clients' needs.
His shop-and-office setup is housed in the former Squeeze soda bottling building. Upon entering, visitors encounter a metal fabrication area to the left that features a milling machine, drill press and lift, among other apparatuses. A loading dock allows trucks to import materials through this wing. Whitney gets stainless, brass and bronze metals from Yarde Metals in Albany and wood from closer vendors such as r.k. MILES and Stanley's Lumber. Splintery stuff fills the room's right half, with a band saw between the two sections.
Beyond the work area, a rectangular office that Whitney calls his "command center" can be seen behind a windowed wall. Whitney built the room and creates blueprints there. After sitting down in front of a couple of monitors, he presented a hard-copy design of a spit jack (a meat roasting machine) he was beginning to make for Heirloom Fire and its rendering in a computer program called Rhinoceros. He did the same for a Norad Mill project.
In 2008, he opened a studio in Pittsfield. While studying sculpture at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Whitney started making frames for painters as well as signs. His metal fabrication work began in earnest after he finished school.
"I had to learn a trade, metal fab, which is separate from sculpture, and that was hard to figure out," Whitney said, noting that, unlike metal fabrication, signmaking can fall under a broad definition of sculpture.
His first large signmaking project came in 2014 when he created a 14-footer for Adams Ale House. Over the years, his two-to-three person operation has also worked on signs for Cheshire Elementary School, Angelina's Subs and District Kitchen & Bar, among others. For companies with design teams, he translates their logos into signs. For firms that haven't budgeted for marketing and signage, he generates the logo himself, designing it with three dimensions in mind.
"It used to really irritate me because the printed sign serves a function for political races and things like that, but if you're a company and you just have a sign printed, sometimes it makes your company look temporary," he said.
Whitney is in it for the long term with WHITCO. A whiteboard in his office tracks potential, current and future projects. This winter has been slow, he admits, but he has kept costs down with an eye toward the future: He wants to add at least another 1,400 square feet to the space, he said. His sculpting career helps keep him motivated to expand his business.
"When I'm doing commercial work and making something for a client, I trick my mind into thinking that it's my art, my sculpture," he said, "but it's really just the nature of the world that I live in [that] to have a shop, to have my heat on, I don't have a choice but to make other people's ideas."
A Whitney-built coin slot machine hugs one of the room's walls. He would soon return to welding a larger model out in the shop's metal fab area, exploring his own concepts in a space where he so often builds for others. One day, he hopes he'll have more creative freedom.
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