A life of Art: James and Sherile Down (Part 1)

After you’ve spent many years in the trade, you often reflect back on the people you have encountered over the years. All of us have memories of those that have changed us, moved us or just annoyed the hell out of us. This is a profile about a couple that I’ve known for some time and not only are they both incredibly talented, their story is worthy of curling up in a nice comfy chair, making a cuppa of your favourite brew and grabbing a couple of  Tim Tams. Enjoy this tale of signees, property entrepreneurs and art gallery owners, James (Bob) and Sherile (Shez) Down, in this, the first of a two part series.

James Down (Bob to his mates) is now a greying middle aged artist with mandatory beard, green grey eyes, a warm smile and slim build. He loves wearing Ducati “T” shirts reflecting his love of motorcycles from his misspent youth; and grew up in rural Victoria, in a small community called Mortlake, near Warrnambool. His dad was a Presbyterian Church elder so James had an upbringing as you would expect - solid, respectful and loving.

As James grew into his teenage years, he dreamt about a future career. He saw an ad on the back page of a magazine advertising commercial art, where you could earn money easily and work from home. But dad took his son aside and advised James that he would be better off training in something a little more formal than a back page correspondence course in a dodgy men’s magazine.  Not long after, 16 year old James was loaded into the car, tattered old suitcase in hand, to the training college in Melbourne to do a pre-apprenticeship course in signwriting. Being from the country, a concerned dad sought out suitable accommodation for his  growing son.

James had some interesting experiences at his new digs, initially boarding at the “Miami Private Hotel” in North Melbourne. Staying at the men’s only hotel turned out to be quite an experience, as after a terrifying night of arguments in the hotel, a dead body was found outside his door. From there his dad moved James to a self-contained flat in Elsternwick, with lovely ladies in the building that had lot of visitors (every hour as it turned out) and were incredibly friendly to an over confident 16 year old …

Training course complete, dad took James under his wing again and physically visited every Sign Shop in Melbourne before he was offered a job with a Victorian staple, St Kilda Signs. Work slowed down as it does from time to time so the young kids were tasked with painting the building and updating the signs. There was a large roof sign, three stories up that no one wanted to go near but James, being ready to impress, set up a series of ladders, all resting on each other. A makeshift scaffold if you like.

Boy was he going to impress the boss with his ingenuity. The owner manager was the founders son, Dennis McNally who screamed at James to get off the ‘pile of sticks’  before he killed himself and everyone underneath him then sacked him, saying: “Pick another trade Son, you’ll never make a signwriter.” Even at this young age James didn’t take rejection lightly and vowed to become a signwriter and a bloody good one at that.

After short stints with several other small companies and now 18 years old, James moved to Maryborough, in Western Victoria. Phillip Douse was a local freelance signwriter from Castlemaine, and James would stalk him whenever he was in town, in awe of his skills and his beautiful cursive script. James spent every spare moment teaching himself to sign write and thought he should enhance his skills and work opportunities by placing an ad in the local paper. Being a young bloke, full of dreams and enthusiasm, he was a few steps ahead of his logic but he ended up getting plenty of work. The only problem was that he had lost his license trying to outrun the police in a dodgy Hillman and ended up on the front page of the Maryborough newspaper!

Long suffering dad came to the rescue yet again by driving his son from job to job. James had saved hard though and had built a small list of essential tools consisting of one ladder, one plank (hardwood and splinters not withstanding) and one pair of steps. James persevered and his skill level grew. He was offered a job with Buckle Bros Signs and was soon travelling around Victoria signwriting all the pubs for Carlton & United Breweries. James then worked for Staunton Signs doing more brewery work in and around Melbourne.

He became friends with Chris Liapis who was also from Maryborough, but his line of work was to do as little as possible to boost his meagre income by drug dealing, which was clearly far more profitable than signwriting. Unfortunately Chris was also mates with Mark “Chopper” Read, as well as Nick Apostolidis, sometimes called Nick the Greek. As most of us know, Chopper Read shot James’s mate Chris in the stomach then burnt down Nick the Greek’s house. The very next month Chopper shot and killed Sammy the Turk outside Bo Jangles nightclub and it was around this time that James was questioning his choice of mates. Some of dad’s lessons in life must have rubbed off, because he decided at this junction in life that it was a good time to move to a different climate, and he moved west.

He ended up working at both Parnell Signs and Daynite Signs in Fremantle. Larry Alford was the founder of Daynite Signs and invented the Can-Cut machine that only old brushies like me will remember – it cut down Coke cans with a curled over lip which didn’t cut into your brushes and made the perfect paint pot. His daughter Sherile (Shez), along with her five siblings worked in the backyard with their dad. Shez would sand down large oil containers for petroleum companies and at a very early age was doing all the screen printing and spray painting.

Larry went halves with Ross Parnell in the game changing Gerber 4B vinyl cutter which was kept at Parnell Signs. James was working at Parnell at the time and Shez dropped in to do some vinyl lettering; and when she saw this young bloke signwriting an air scoop on a truck, she was taken by his beautiful cursive script. The two became an item after James invited Shez to a friend’s birthday party and rescued her after she was pushed into the swimming pool by  his ex-girlfriend.

James and Shez drove around Australia in 1989, before settling back home in Perth where James began to do subbie work for a couple of companies. When James applied for work with me via a phone call, he told me was a self-taught signwriter. I was reluctant at first but since my father was a self-taught signwriter himself, I decided to give him a chance. His work was first rate with the best script I have yet to see. He was fast, with great layout skills and I just loved his work. So determined was James to excel in everything he did, he practised his script with his hand writing so his hand written letters were identical to his brush lettering. I haven’t seen anything like this since. Over the years James built up his own clientele and I was lucky enough to utilise his skills from time to time.

Written by Vernon Kingman