Black Rabbit Studio practices art of hand-lettering

Like most days, Cayetano Valenzuela sits alone at his work station, his frame bent over a piece of wood, perfecting a once dying craft. The smell of paint hangs in the air, as the artist carefully twists his hand and flicks his wrist, forming each curvature of the letter form.

“I just think I am so f*cking lucky that I can do this for my life,” said Valenzuela, owner of Black Rabbit Studio. “I come in and I love the smell of the paint, I love the feel of the brushes in my hand. It’s a beautiful thing to do.”

Valenzuela specializes in hand-lettering, a traditional craft that merges the worlds of type and art. His work can be found all over Syracuse in the form of large hand-painted signs at local businesses such as Recess Coffee, Funk ‘n Waffles, Strong Hearts Cafe, Modern Pop Culture and Midnight Sun. After being laid off from his job at an after-school program due to defunding, Valenzuela created Black Rabbit Studio in 2013 to pay the bills full-time.

The studio is tucked away on the third floor of the massive Delavan Art Center in downtown Syracuse. Hand-painted signs direct patrons “right this way” and warn people of the “uneven floor boards” that lead to the studio.

The room is dominated by Valenzuela’s workstation, a large knee-high board that takes up almost half of the crude space. On this sunny September afternoon, Valenzuela is stroking his black and grey speckled beard, leaning back in his work chair and pointing around the shop.

“Once I started doing it, I noticed all around every city there were these old ghost signs, hand-painted signs on buildings,” Valenzuela said. “There’s this dying art form that is fading right before our eyes, and people never really look up to see it, so I became really interested in that.”

He has been making art since he was a little kid, but he only started studying hand-lettering a few years ago. When he first started working on the craft, he took classes and read as much literature as he could on the topic.

These books and miscellaneous papers are scattered around his workshop, stained and easily reachable. He sought out “old-timers,” who offered pieces of advice on their craft, but many thought he was crazy – digitally printed vinyl signs put these artists out of business years ago, he said.

In the beginning, he said his process consisted of a lot of trial and error, getting strokes right and having the right viscosity of paint. The more complex signs start with a pencil drawn sketch which he then scans and blows up to a bigger proportion. He then takes a spurred wheel and perforates the design, leaving an impression on the board. He sands the back of it and uses talcum powder or chalk dust to pop the design through, which he finally paints over.

When Valenzuela lost his job at the after-school program, he was faced with a choice: find a 9-5 job or become a full-time artist.

“Well, I think when it first became full-time it kind of became an ‘oh sh*t moment,’” said Melissa DeStevens-Valenzuela, Cayetano’s wife. “He had worked for an after-school program which lost its grant. So it was like, what do we do?”

With a daughter and wife to take care of and bills to pay, Valenzuela got into more commercial work: selling T-shirt designs, making logos for bands and working long hours.

Now, he still creates shirt logos and dabbles on side projects, but is at the point where he can say no to jobs— a luxury he didn’t always have, he said.

Valenzuela is a one-man production crew, creating all of the artwork that Black Rabbit Studio sells, but DeStevens-Valenzuela helps in every way she can. She acts as a soundboard for his ideas, points out hand-painted signs as they drive and handles the taxes for the small business.

“He is bringing art into businesses and making the spaces beautiful, whereas they could have easily went and got vinyl lettering somewhere, but like Strong Hearts and Recess and all these great places have his work at the forefront of how their business looks,” DeStevens-Valenzuela said. “So art is becoming the everyday in that sense.”

Valenzuela is currently working on two signs for Recess Coffee’s upcoming downtown Syracuse location. These black boards lean against the wall on the far side of the studio half-finished. He said they are some of this favorite works so far.

The artist leaned forward in his chair and pushed his thick, black-framed glasses up higher on his nose. He looked out the window, and let out a sigh.

“I have such great hopes for Syracuse; it’s not there yet,” Valenzuela said. “We need to put more into the public eye, what art can be and how it can impact daily life.”